Let Us Descend
And this is why Oprah is the queen. I mean, Jesmyn Ward is the queen. But they’re both the queens for different, but linked, reasons.
Here’s Let Us Descend, Ward’s latest novel and Oprah’s most recent pick for her book club. This novel, which borrows language and imagery from Dante’s Inferno, did not get from me the close, line-by-line read it deserves. I’m a pretty “good” reader, but about 50 pages in, I realized that in a perfect world, I would have started over and had Dante by my side. I read somewhere that Let Us Descend might require a study guide. Maybe. The “story” — a reimagination of American slavery through different points of its history — might hold your interest on its own. You’ll catch on to the sinking (“descending”) imagery quickly — and if you read Ward’s chilling 2020 Vanity Fair essay about losing her partner to a “mysterious flu-like virus” in January of that year and how she was “sinking” in grief, you’ll feel all-the-more-close to this book. But you can tell there’s more there. Not surprising because Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones (the other Ward novels I’ve read) rose to a different stratosphere of “writerly” novels and when I finally read them, it was glaringly obvious. I think her work will be among a small handful of contemporary fiction that proves lasting. Some people are putting bets on an eventual Nobel; many compare her to Toni Morrison and William Faulkner. My advice: Dive in to Let Us Descend clear-headed and ready to read deliberately.
But why is Oprah the queen? Because check her out, over 25 years after starting her “club,” continuing to encourage Americans — and beyond — to challenge themselves with their reading habits. While other celebrity book clubs offer up fine books, here’s the queen recommending everything from Marilynne Robinson (love!), to Great Expectations by Dickens, to Night by Elie Wiesel, to, yes, Faulkner. She sprinkles in some deeper self-help-y stuff as well as easier, but thought-provoking, novels (see my post on Wellness by Nathan Hill). And when controversy surrounds her choices (hi, James Frey; hi, Jonathan Franzen; hi, American Dirt), she engages with it.
Complexity can be…popular!
originally published on instagram