This is an extraordinary novel -- perhaps the best novel that Jesmyn Ward has written, and that's saying a lot. Ward takes "Sing, Unburied, Sing" and Morrison's "Beloved" and turns it up a few notches. Perhaps most striking is how she preserves the humanity of her protagonist who displays remarkable resilience and agency despite the horrors she faces. 5 stars, 6 if it was an option.

This author is brilliant and I adore her. This book is more historical than her usual writing. It tells a sort of slave narrative. It's gripping. I could not stop reading. There is something hopeful about it, despite the circumstances. The writing is beautiful, as expected. It is definitely on par with her best books. She also manages to cover a whole lot of themes in a relatively short book.

I think everyone should read books by this author. And I definitely recommend this one, which seems a bit shorter and more accessible somehow.

This, for me, is Jesmyn Ward’s best yet. It should be required reading. This searing, honest, and ultimately hopeful novel about the injustice and inhumanity of enslavement is, in a word, incendiary. Ward is a master of imagery and has built a story that readers cannot and should not turn away from. Books like this remind us WHY we must remember and know the impact of our history.

In the years before the Civil War, a child is born out of wedlock, the product of a non-consensual relationship between a white plantation owner and one of his slaves. The father disavows all responsibility for the child and she grows up as just another slave on the estate. Both mother and daughter are eventually sold to another owner and forced to walk in a brutal chain-gang from the Carolinas to southern Louisiana, where they are to be sold again to the highest bidder. The daughter, who has no idea what becomes of her mother, endures the journey only to be placed in the service of a sadistic woman who runs a sugar cane plantation. All the while, the girl is kept alive and guided in her quest for freedom by otherworldly spirits who assume the identity of her dead relatives and speak to her.

That is essence of Annis’ story, as told in Let Us Descend by celebrated author Jesmyn Ward. The novel’s title alludes to a passage from the Inferno in which Dante begins his descent into Hell, guided by the shade of the poet Virgil. This becomes an apt metaphor for the soul-crushing journey through life that Annis finds herself on, which is unrelentingly grim in almost every instance. (In a playful touch of irony, Ward has Annis hear Dante’s poem recited during the little bit of education she is allowed, meaning that the character has a literary context for just how bad her plight really is.) Perhaps the only things saving the reader from the comparably grim fate of experiencing Annis’ pervasive misery are the often sublime sentences that the author constructs in telling the tale. Ward truly is a wordsmith of the highest order and many of the images she creates are as remarkable as they are compelling.

And yet, Let Us Descend is far from a perfect novel and it is also one that, for me, falls well short of the impossibly high standard the author has set with her previous work (Salvage the Bones, Sing, Unburied, Sing). The biggest shortcoming in this book is its overreliance on the magical realism elements embodied in the spirits with whom Annis is in almost constant contact. In fact, the term “element” is misleading here because Aza, the spirit who impersonates Annis’ grandmother, appears so frequently that she/it really becomes a main character in the story; certainly, Annis does not “talk” to anyone else nearly as much as she does to Aza. Unfortunately, most of these conversations are turgid and repetitive to the point that they become a distraction. So, while Annis’ history is one that is well worth telling, this rendition was not as affecting as it might have been.

This is a beautifully written and devastating account of a young slave’s journey after being sold south by her master and separated from her mother. Jessamyn Ward’s writing is poetic and gorgeous and I thought the strength of this book lied in its ability to personalize the slavery experience and the day to day despair. To me, this book read as a love story about the bounds between mothers and daughters and I loved the connection between Annis and her mother and the stories she was raised on of her grandmother. I really wanted to love this book, and while I loved the language, I struggled with the heavy focus on spirits, with whom Annis can communicate, and the overall magical realism.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the chance to read and review this ARC. The note at the beginning of the book, and the connection to Ward’s own grief, was especially moving.

I’m not sure how to review something to masterful - so nuanced - so precise and thoughtful - so smart and evocative - so visceral. This book will be taught in schools - the legends and lore and unflinching brutality that was inflicted on the enslaved. I’m forever changed after reading it.

Jesmyn Ward writes the most gorgeous sentences, and she has a habit of using them to make both ordinary and extraordinarily awful circumstances feel richer and more impactful. As a result, I was very curious to see her move from contemporary fiction to historical fiction following Annis, an enslaved woman sold from her plantation and walking south to New Orleans with Let Us Descend. I had a feeling that Ward’s writing would devastate and enlighten me.

On the one hand, I love how Ward gives Annis another world to escape to. Her refusal to make Annis’ story simply one of suffering and indignity, while still remaining true to the harrowing realities of slavery in the United States, was brilliant. But removing Annis away from the world we know and into the world of spirits often felt like a flattening of the novel’s stakes and emotional impact. I admire what Ward was doing, but I don’t think her ambitions were fully realized in Let Us Descend.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for providing me with an early review copy of Let Us Descend. All opinions are my own.

I have read and loved two other books by Ward (Sing Unburied Sing and Salvage the Bone). This novel has us inside the mind of an enslaved woman Annise. The absolute torture of slavery is explored as her mother is ripper from her, she’s made to walk for weeks in punishing conditions and then is sold in New Orleans. Along the way Annise finds a kind of faith in her ancestor, and is able to maintain her sense of self through her suffering. Though the circumstances are brutal the writing is lyrical and beautiful. I didn’t love the passages with the ancestor and Annise as much as the course of what Annise was enduring but overall an important, beautiful and intense read for those that loved Yellow Wife or Water Dancer by Cotes.

Let Us Descend is everything I hoped it would be and more. Jesmyn Ward is an auto buy author for me and I've been waiting for this fourth novel patiently while also understanding that Jesymyn lost her partner in 2020 and would take her time and tell the next story in her heart when she felt ready.

After reading I will never think about the saying "you ain't my mama" the same again. Annis, the protagonist in this story would not be owned by anyone, not by her enslaver and not even by the ancestral guide, Mama Aza (her foremother), who believes she knows what's best. Annis is in deep mourning after she is separated from her mother but she will not give up her resolve to be free. What Ward manages to do in Let Us Descend is to grant the reader access to the many ways freedom can look and feel on a spiritual and psychic level.

Ward details the trials and tribulations one must go through in order to truly access freedom in a pre-Civil War world where freedom is just a dream. Annis can taste the possibility of freedom in the stories passed down from her mother. She does not forget, never forgets, and in doing so she is able to determine her own outcome. Understanding the past helps Annis to fully orient herself in the present and image a different future than that of her foremothers. I will be thinking about this story for a long while.

Jesmyn Ward has a gift for writing the spiritual realm and honoring the ancestors with her master storytelling. I'm eternally grateful for her gifts as a writer. We should all be grateful.

Thank you to the author and publisher for the e-arc copy!

In “Let Us Descend” Jesmyn Ward imagines how slavery could have felt through the eyes of a Black slave named Annis, whom we first meet as a young girl. Annis is the product of her master repeatedly raping her mother, who herself was the daughter of an African warrior.

First her mother is sold, and then Annis, who is destined for the slave markets of New Orleans. (She, along with other slaves, has to walk there from the Carolinas).

The author has said that she “wanted to encourage readers to feel with and for Annis, and to recreate her experience as viscerally as possible.” This she does, to devastating effect. But she also wants to convey how someone enslaved might have retained a sense of self, even when she had no physical agency over her own body, and what she did or did not do with it.

Annis relies a great deal on the memories of stories told to her by her mother about her warrior ancestors, as well as a belief in spirits in nature.

The writing is excellent but the experience of enslavement, as seen through Annis’s eyes, is almost unbearably terrifying and horrifying at once. It is a lovely book and perhaps a necessary book for both Black and white descendants of the slavery period, but not for the faint of heart.

It's dark and devastating but laced with a glimmer of hope.

I read in a note from the editor that Ward sought to explore how enslaved people might have retained their sense of self, their sense of hope, in a time and place that attempted to negate both, day in and out. I believe she did that and more and for that, I am forever changed.

It's wholly original but if I was asked to connect it to something I've read before, it struck me as a combination of the journey taken in Colston Whitehead's Underground Railroad and horrors of slavery depicted in The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr. This book pulls NO punches and I was gutted by the halfway point. The sense of place and pain was visceral. It was gorgeously written, disturbing, powerful and will stay with me a long time.

Wow. How I wish this author had more books out there. I've read them all to date. I love magica Realism and she writes it with brilliance , just added in at the perfect moment.
This book is about slavery and spirits that guide. Survival. Womanhood. I loved it.
I loved her southern books even more. I look forward to more by her in the future. A long, winding, brilliant novel hopefully. Magic❤️

What a beautifully written book. Ward introduces us to Annis, a young enslaved woman grappling with grief and loss while still fighting for the life she deserves. The descriptions are vivid and painful to read; Ward has a way of articulating the depths of grief that no other writer can. This veered a bit more into magical realism than I had initially expected, and some of those aspects went over my head. Ultimately this was an incredibly well-written book, one that I’ll be thinking of for a while.

A story of a girl, Annis, who was sold by the very white slave owner who fathered her. It’s an awful march south and Annis finds comfort in memories. The stories of her African Warrior Grandmother. In that way, her mind and imagination are free even though her body is not.

This is a story of her journey and I think this may be the best one yet. This author definitely knows her subject matter and the stories she tells tug at your heart. What a beautiful story this is. Painful at times, but full of hope.

NetGalley/ Scribner October 03, 2023

Jesmyn Ward has won the National Book Award twice for her exquisite prose and transformative storytelling and she has truly outdone herself here. If this book doesn't top my favorites list of 2023, I will be surprised. On the front cover of the ARC, Ward encourages us, "Sit with me. Let me tell you a story... It feels as if I have been in the dark, journeying with this character, for a long time. It is difficult to walk south with Annis. Her narrative descends from one hellscape to another, but I promise that if you come with me, you will rise. It will be worth the work, worth the walking." She is right, and so is Scriber for calling this book a miracle.

Let us Descend is the story of an enslaved girl, Annis, and her mother, and her mother before that. It is the story of generations, of myths, of spirits, and of transcendence. Like Ward says, this is a hard journey. But it is also about claiming your humanity and a sense of hope despite people trying their absolute hardest to strip someone entirely of both. As a young girl, Annis hears the white children being read Dante's Inferno. Annis compares her journey through a different type of hell with what she heard in that book alongside other illusions to bees and to water. All of this blends together to make a story that will truly take your breath away. Every sentence is a gift.

Let Us Descend is sure to become a classic. I hope that readers 100 years from now are savoring these words just as I am.The mother daughter relationships at the core of this book are the most beautiful I've read. I can't wait for it to be out in the world October 3rd, 2023

Once again Jesmyn Ward has delivered a triumph of a book. Let Us Descend, is a story about slavery, yes, but it is also full of folklore and ghosts and faith, family and the unbreakable bonds of love. To walk with Annis, to descend with her into so many levels of misery, is a difficult thing, but to come out on the other side with a real sense of what it means to be strong, and how it feels to have hope for a better future is a miracle of storytelling. The prose sings on the page - this is a novel that isn’t just read, but is experienced, is felt in the heart, is the kind of book that stays with you long after the final page is turned.

This was a heartbreaking book, with many parts very difficult to read, but I devoured this book in less than two days. Jesmyn Ward is a masterful writer. The journey that the main character Annis walks from the Carolinas to New Orleans felt so visceral, heart-wrenching, and vivid. It was a depiction of slavery I'd never read before, and one I won't forget. The character of Annis had more resilience and grit than maybe any other character I've ever read. I can't wait to read whatever Jesym writes next.

Jesmyn Ward's graceful, lyrical prose tells the story of Annis, an enslaved young woman in the American South. Guided by the spirits of her grandmother, mother, and the elements themselves, Annis journeys from one plantation to the brutal slave markets of New Orleans to a sugar cane farm, where she begins to glimpse a possibility of freedom. Ward does not shield the reader from the cruelty and savagery of the slave owners nor does she strip the humanity from Annis and the other enslaved characters. Highly recommended.

Let Us Descend is a lyrical and gorgeously written novel about survival written by one of the best literary voices I have ever had the pleasure to read.
This is a slave story like no other. Full of gut wrenching descriptions of slavery like I have never read before,
The reader is immersed in Annis' story and is not released until the very last word.
This book is a departure from the other work by Jesmyn Ward but still equally as stunning and amazing.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for my review.

Brilliant writing and storytelling. It has perhaps the best first line I've ever read: The first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand.

This is a book written in grief, examining the human will to live, to love, to hurt, and to continue on after the greatest losses. My only complaint is that I would have read another 200 pages about Annis's life.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.