Back before I treated multibook series as single entries, I wrote about Jesmyn Ward‘s Salvage the Bones, Where the Line Bleeds, and Sing, Unburied, Sing. I’m a fan. As such, I was greatly looking forward to her 2023 novel, Let Us Descend.
For me, it did not disappoint.
Let Us Descend is a slave narrative, detailing a woman’s life, initially on a plantation, then through a forced march to New Orleans and the auction block, and finally to enslaved life on a sugar plantation outside the city. It’s not an easy read–but of course it’s not supposed to be an easy read. But it’s a worthwhile one.
Ward’s prose remains scintillatingly inventive, full of a rare level of creativity and lyricism that manages to remain emotionally direct. And the emotional core of the characters–especially the protagonist’s relationship with her mother, grand-mother, and a somewhat capricious matrilineal ghost/goddess are deftly and clearly drawn. Of special power is Ward’s depiction of the natural world, of the storms of the Gulf Coast and, particularly, its flora, both gardened and wild.
I have a very trusted friend who found Let Us Descend too brutal for their taste, but I found humanity in its pages, and in that humanity, hope. But you do need to know what you’re stepping into: there is cruelty and blood and brutality and the horror of the daily fact of an enslaved life on full and powerful display. There is also resistance and love and friendship and power.
Recommended.