With her debut novel, “The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter,” author Brionni Nwosu presents a stunningly beautiful story about a woman who makes a deal with Death. The result is that the title character, Nella Carter, evades her own imminent death and becomes immortal. Her quest is to prove to Death that there are enough worthwhile humans, humans who are kind and good and loving, that Death should not end all human lives and start the human race anew.
We meet Nella in 1784 when she is 24 years old and on the verge of death. She is alone in the slave’s cabin where she has been left to die of her illness. But Death is astounded that Nella can see him, recognizes him for what he is, and starts a conversation with him. When he tells her that she’s going to a better place and that humans do nothing but spread pestilence throughout the land, she dares to disagree. Nella says that she’s done nothing wrong. She tells him that there is beauty and love, family and good memories, and that those things make humans worthy of life. And coming from an enslaved person whose life is about to end, Death listens. He’s entranced by her bravery, her passion, her intelligence, and her logic.
Finally, Nella and Death come to an agreement. Death will allow Nella to live, and she will provide him with proof of the good of humankind. She will write about it, document instances of goodness and humanity, and so long as she can prove that there are humans worthy of life, he will allow her to live and continue to fight for the continuance of mankind.
The story is told in third person each time Nella meets with Death, and the rest is in first person. After the prologue, where we learn of the agreement, the narrative moves to present day Savannah, as Nella narrates. She meets Sebastian, a brilliant young man with whom she feels an immediate connection. And in spite of Death’s condition that she never disclose their agreement to anyone, for the first time in her long, long life, she tells someone her story.
Nella lives over three hundred years, so to narrate the whole course of her life would entail volumes. Nwosu carefully shares those parts of Nella’s life that involve important people to Nella, people with whom she’s fallen in love or whom she loves. The book is divided into eight parts, not including the prologue. And as in many great novels, the story circles around, as it begins and ends in Savannah. In between, Nella lives, under different names, in New Orleans, Paris, London, and New York, Montgomery, Buenos Aires.
Of course there are many more places where Nella visits and resides, but she tells Sebastian the essential parts of her life and the difficulty and pain of living for so long. As in many novels about immortals, the worst part about a long life is outliving all those one loves. Spouses, partners, children, friends, all grow old and die while the immortal person continues to live, unchanging, and left alone. Nella is forced to move and change names to keep her secret, as she never ages.
Each person Nella loves and each story is different and touching in a different way. Nwosu doesn’t dwell on the injustices Nella endures because of her skin color, but neither does she gloss over the prejudice and discrimination that Nella faces. Nella is a writer, and early in her long life, she submits her essays under false names so that the fact she’s female won’t keep her work from being published.
The stories of each love and each life kept me riveted. Nwosu’s ability to provide rich detail about the settings and the time periods, and to convey the depth of the emotions Nella both feels and engenders in others is striking. Nwosu also stretches our credulity when she posits that Nella and her earnest defense of life and love manages to change even Death. Readers are asked to consider all the vile actions that mankind has engaged in: wars, torture, cruelty, greed. Is mankind worth saving or would the world be better if, as Death posits, a plague wiped us from the face of the earth?
The themes are worthy of book club discussions and will have readers pondering Nella’s choices for long after the last page is turned. How do we survive losing those we love? Does loneliness kill? Do our connections with others make our lives worth living? There are many questions that arise while reading this brilliant novel, and I often found myself reading more slowly, to savor Nella’s lives and loves, and to ponder what it means to be human. But at the same time, because of the cadence and the structure of the narrative, this is a difficult novel to put down.
Nwosu considers the age-old question that we first encounter as children when we read “Tuck Everlasting” and asks us: would you want to live forever? This wondrous novel paints a picture of what that would entail, and the heartbreak — and the joys — that might result.
This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.