Mrs Death Misses Death: Salena Godden

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Godden strikes the perfect balance between humour and effective insights into grief, trauma, living, and dying. A reader may tear up one moment and laugh the next, with levity never too far around the corner. Mrs Death herself is reluctant to allow her memoir to be transformed into a bleak work, preferring laughter and cheerfulness. At the end of this book, there is a little section where the reader can fill in the name of a loved one, so that the copy of Mrs Death Misses Death contains the reader’s own dead. If this particular text exists longer than we mortals, so too will the names of our loved ones. I can be a tough old bird. I can see how I might have found this mawkish and sentimental. But such is the curious power of this book that I wrote the name of my dad who met Mrs Death unexpectedly one night in November 2016. Miss you. You were great. Godden brings her poetic skills in writing this amusing story, of Mrs. Death unburdening her story to Woof Willeford, a struggling author who buys a magic desk. Through the desk, Mrs. Death takes Woof with her while she explains her story. I listened to the audio narrated by the author herself. She tells her story in a stream-of-conscious format which works well with her poetic skills. Salena Godden appears at The Fountain's Evening of Quarantine Dreaming , 25 Feb, 9pm, part of Paisley Book Festival

Salena Godden’s debut novel is as much an affirmation of life as a tale of death, writes Wendy Erskine. If I was to pass on anything like advice to the brilliant graduates here today it would be this: Go where the love is. Enjoy belonging in the unbelonging, it is where the good work is made. It is where the truth lives. I would want you all to know that doing the hard thing and the most difficult thing is very often the right thing to do. Imposter syndrome is your signal: If you are in a room and you are cosy and comfortable and you feel like you are belonging and you feel safe, it is highly likely you are not challenging yourself or pushing yourself and your work. Put it this way, I do not feel comfortable standing here reading this speech and so because of that I am glad to be here.Told in sparse, affecting prose interspersed with poetry, Godden produces a thought-provoking novel that travels across time and place to question the value of life, the experiences of womanhood, and grief in all its forms.’

I just— it feels so juvenile to me. This is the kind of unpolished, stream of consciousness poetry you scribble in your teenage math journal while blasting Fall Out Boy. The effect is to produce a collage of speech and speechlessness, a story that sometimes slips away from you even while you are reading it, becoming a memento mori in form as well as content. In other words, it’s exactly the sort of thing you expect when a poet writes a novel, and exactly the sort of thing you’ll devour if you like huge helpings of experimentation with your fiction. This beautiful Barnes & Noble Exclusive Edition includes an exclusive alternate cover, an exclusive short story, unique color endpapers, unique color cover stamp. Mrs Death has had enough. She is exhausted by her job and now seeks someone to unburden her conscience to.The voice of the furniture allows for these same insights into the pain of living to be developed whilst maintaining the light tone which eases the discomfort of truth. Mrs Death Misses Death should not, however, be dismissed as simply a darkly humorous book. Godden’s observations on mourning are particularly potent as she derives meaning from the mundane, from the objects we choose to keep to the way we might be innocently ‘ordinary’ in our unawareness of how our worlds will irrevocably change. I felt the first 25% of the book was phenomenal, the writing, introduction of characters, scenes and Mrs. Death narration was flawless. Then, it all started to wane. Death in itself is a very board topic, it’s been happening since the beginning of time- there are so many ways to explore the topic and I think that’s where the author (maybe even the editor) may have went wrong, she tried to do entirely too much instead of keeping it tighter and more focused. At one point I was like, “huh, how dis even drop in yasso?!!” that for me was a little infuriating.

The actor-comedian and the poet advocate for their favourite books. Andi chooses The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary, Nikita loves Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden and Harriett goes for The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. A modern-day Pilgrim's Progress leavened with caustic wit . . . This is not light-hearted stuff, yet Godden has produced a miraculously light-hearted novel . . . an elegant, occasionally uproarious, danse macabre Guardian Honoured by this role, Wolf’s relationship to Mrs Death forms the basis of the story, in addition to containing elements of Death’s own writings. Moving between the dawn of time to the present day, Mrs Death Misses Death interrogates the big questions we ask about dying whilst also focusing on the personal, through stories from the Willeford family tree. Dark at times - with compelling stories about miscarriages of justice, murder and racial oppression - it is nonetheless celebratory and life-affirming, aglow with love, fortitude and compassion Daily MailI mean, obviously YMMV and there will always be outliers, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that if you only read poetry irregularly and often find yourself being impatient with it when you do, and it’s mostly an exercise in frustration for you like it is for me, then you will probably feel pretty similarly to me regarding this book. I am upset about it, though, because the premise sounded so good, and the cover was so pretty. It’s the idea of when you’re not speaking your truth, and not saying something you really want to say,” she explains. “When you keep putting something off, you berate yourself and put yourself down for not getting something finished. It’s easy to have a really good idea, it’s difficult to finish something, isn’t it? So to pursue it, and to persist in finishing it, hurt, but it hurt a hell of a lot more giving up.” If you can’t possibly choose between the two covers, then one for you and one for a flatmate/partner/cat/snow person seems the only way forward. #mrsdeathmissesdeath #SalenaGodden #ReadCanongate #bookstagram #instabook #indiebookshops #choosebookshops #independentbookshops Mental health is such a strong component of Wolf’s story, and there are times where the narrative will have you questioning if what you’re reading is even real. There’s a part of the book where Wolf admits that they’re Bipolar, and there are a handful of moments where you begin to question if Mrs Death is even there or if it’s all part of Wolf’s mind, their worsening mental health; and this is even before their Bipolar is even brought up. Even by the end of the book it’s unclear if we’ve actually experienced a story of a troubled young person meeting the personification of Death, of if it’s simply the story of a troubled young person trying to find some sense of stability and happiness in their life. In a time where death is at the forefront, it’s rare to find a book that so thoroughly reminds us about the joys of life, the fragments of memories that last a lifetime, rooting out what really matters. “Even though it’s got death in the title, it’s a book about life – it’s about living life,” says Godden. “It’s about telling people you love them before it’s too late. It’s not really about death, which death often isn’t. So much of this book is about facing your fear, and how empowering it is to see fear for what it is, to see doubt, and to find courage, to find hope.