Let Us Descend: A Novel

I enjoy Jesmyn Ward’s work so everything she writes is an automatic read for me, synopses not necessary. I went into this book not knowing what it was about and only expecting that I’d enjoy because it’s Jesmyn Ward. I finished the book confused and unmoved because I didn’t really understand what was happening and I’m still kinda unclear about the messaging of the novel.

Something that made this book confusing for me were the prose. They waxed a bit too poetic for me making it a bit difficult to understand and even clogging to story at times. The overly poetic prose also contributed to the vagueness of the writing making the story a bit difficult to follow at times. I felt like I was missing things as I was reading because I didn’t fully get what the characters were discussing or alluding to.

I understand that this is a story about multi-generational trauma and healing. I appreciate that this novel reveres ancestry which is a common theme in Jesmyn Ward’s work. As someone currently living in Benin, I liked the inclusion of the Beninese Neale warriors in the narrative and that Benin gets another spotlight in popular media. However, I just didn’t understand this stir and the purpose and what we was supposed to be driving us forward in the story.

Because this is Jesmyn Ward I’ll consider reading this book again to better understand what I didn’t get the first time. But this is the first time I’ve been disappointed by her work.

“Let Us Descend” by Jezmyn Ward requires a strong stomach, like most novels about slavery. The reader wants realism, then reads about rape and technical incest and wishes for less. The protagonist, Annis, takes us on a journey inspired by Dante’s Inferno when her Sire (father) cruelly sends her mother away.

“Magical Realism,” one of the suspicious genres assigned to this intense book by Goodreads, is my kryptonite. I get lost if I struggle to transition from the real to the fantastical. When Annis meets spirits, however, she thoroughly introduces us to them. Having a caring spiritual being with whom you could consult while going through the humiliating process of a slave market provides promise in an otherwise hopeless situation.

I watched a Jezmyn Ward interview on the Seth Meyers show in which he described this as an “easy read.” I needed several double-takes to comprehend everything. I simultaneously thought the action was a horrifying representation of slavery and that I did not know what was going on. I had a professor to help with “Inferno,” thankfully.

Still, you will enjoy Annis as she struggles to find creative ways to have freedom. Annis finds solutions despite her struggles, some of which are too late in the book to mention here. The author based this story on the journey process instead of a sequential plot or specific destination. Dante’s classic “Inferno” qualifies as the same quirky classification.

I read for the same reason I teach: I like “A-Ha” moments. This book had them, but you had to go a long time between them. It was a grueling experience. I wanted to like it more than I did, but my comprehension started to slip, which affected my interest in the characters and the storyline.

In her afterword, Ward acknowledges that she struggled with this book, and that struggle shows. I'm a huge fan of almost all of her work, but not as big a fan of "Let Us Descend". The stories of the cruelty and privations experienced by slaves is moving and very familiar. Perhaps it can't be retold too often. Ward's descriptions of scenes are vivid. However, I didn't feel that there was enough movement in the plot, enough change, to accompany the descriptions of hardships. I was just not able to get immersed in "....Descend" as I've been immersed in her previous work. The effectiveness of the spirits which attempt to guide the protagonist did not work as well for me as they apparently did for others. The book also seems to have a couple of "seams" which don't quite stick together, and the ending seems somewhat forced. Still, I remain a huge fan of her previous work, and I look forward to her next book. Without question, I'll buy and read that book.

This novel opens with as magnificent a sentence as the human mind can devise. Towards the end, the protagonist's efforts to extricate herself from a toxic relationship with her spirit guide, demonstrates tremendous dexterity of thought on the part of the writer. But for me, everything between was a slough.

My first question about this novel was, what is it? I could not make sense of why it has been marketed as prose fiction when it is clearly written in verse. When I recognised that it is in conversation with Dante's "The Divine Comedy", I counseled myself to continue plodding. Unfortunately, the interesting vision was not enough to warm me to this work.

It may be that I'm just tired of slave narratives. Chattle slavery in the Americas was horrendous. I know that. If I am to read another slave narrative, it must tell me more than I know. But my dissatisfaction does not end there. The fact that the protagonist, an enslaved woman with no formal education, delivered the bulk of her narrative in a version of English that only educated people speak, was mystifying. Her vocabulary included words like, "detritus”, “occluded”, “purview”, “inexorable”, “interrogating”, “infinitesimal”, “instinctual”, “dissipate”, “duplicitous”, “dissent” and “unfurls”. Yet when we read her in dialogue, she speaks a black vernacular English. The novel gives us no explanation of how she came to be bilingual.

The bottom line is I found this work dull, dull, dull. If any of you enjoys it, please help me understand what I've missed.