One approach Godden used to condense the text was to turn what originally she wrote as essays into shorter poems, such as 'Mrs Death in Holloway Prison' featuring Sarah Reed's story, giving the reader time to pause, and think and to "say her name." This is a broken prose poem which begins: One of my absolute favorite characteristics in books is WEIRDNESS. I’m exactly the target audience for experimental storytelling. The premise sounded awesome, but the execution just fell so short. The weirdness felt so surface level. It gave the book this Fake-Deep feel.

Salena Godden is known for the graphic power of her work and is one of the foremost poets in the UK, as well as an author and singer songwriter. Speaking of fire, and of the title, Wolf (biracial, nonbinary, and possibly bipolar) is here to narrate only because Mrs Death missed one. Their mum died in a house fire. Wolf should have died that day, too, but heard a voice saying “ Wake up, Wolf … Can you smell smoke?” Were they spared deliberately, or did Mrs Death make a mistake? (After all, we learn that when a patient briefly wakes up on the operating table before dying for good, it’s because Mrs Death’s printer got jammed.) Historical Look In the book Mrs. Death refers some deaths that made international news, or deaths that are still unsolved or you may not know about. I think getting a little history lesson within the book worked so seamlessly. There were a few spots where I thought the content repetitive and wondered if the miscellany format distracted from the narrative, but overall the book more than lives up to its fantastic cover, title, and premise. And with the pandemic’s global death toll rising daily, it could hardly be more relevant. Exploring death Let’s be real, we are all going to die, yet, this is something I don’t think we talk a lot about. Or if we do it is generally clouded in fear. Death is the only thing we have surety about yet, as the book says, we don’t call it by name when it happens. We say, “pass on, passed…” anything but death. Without death, there is no life, and I enjoyed how the author was able to position death as something we should think about, maybe not harp on but at least think about. I liked that it is a troubled young writer who had experiences with people dying that got to have a friendship with Death. That for me really gave the theme the depth it needed.I believe this was supposed to be a unique, powerful 'story' told partially by the character of Death herself (yes a woman), and by a confusing character named Wolf. We get a couple other random commentary chapters thrown in for good measure but mostly it's about Wolf's struggles with mental health and the idea of why we live; and Death's remorse at having to take lives (plus some extensive comments on when people are 'misses' or nearly die). There could have maybe been a timeline set-up here that was manageable or could be followed; but the way the book is written it just gets lost.

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.Together Mrs Death and Wolf talk about the role of death in the world, the reasons why death happens, the people it happens to, and the effect it has on people. At times the book feels more like a stream of consciousness rather than a story, and there are sections written from Mrs Death’s point of view where we become swept up in her unique perspective. We get to see the world as she sees it, this being who has existed since the dawn of time, since humans took their first breaths. We see what hundreds of thousands of years of walking through the world unseen and ignored, crossing people over the threshold of death has done to her, how tired it has made her.

Following the earlier suggestion that we think of Death not as a male character, as we have been encouraged to in the past, we’re then asked to consider how strange it is that this was ever thought to be the case.

A rhythmic and powerful poetic meditation on death, life and love and the hidden mysteries of the universe; both playful and sombre, hilarious and human”