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"We have extensive accounts, typed out neatly: 'They took me into a dark room and started hitting me on the head and stomach and legs. I stayed in this room for 5 days, naked, with no clothes.'"
Angela Woodward's novel Ink tells the story of two women who spend their days doing that neat typing. Sylvia and Marina, both single moms, work in a suburban office building, transcribing tape recordings of witness statements about detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. Their ordinary preoccupations—problems with the soap in the restroom, the motives of Marina's new love Mr. Right, and Sylvia's worries about paying for her son Jordan's show choir costume—provide a lulling backdrop to the violence represented in the transcripts.
Woodward layers essayistic explorations of the history of ink and writing materials into the women's tale, along with the story of the disastrous masterpiece of a French poet, and a writer's notations about her daily commute and the lake behind her house. Then a new crime is revealed. Ink is an illuminating meditation on what it means to bear witness.
Angela Woodward's novel Ink tells the story of two women who spend their days doing that neat typing. Sylvia and Marina, both single moms, work in a suburban office building, transcribing tape recordings of witness statements about detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. Their ordinary preoccupations—problems with the soap in the restroom, the motives of Marina's new love Mr. Right, and Sylvia's worries about paying for her son Jordan's show choir costume—provide a lulling backdrop to the violence represented in the transcripts.
Woodward layers essayistic explorations of the history of ink and writing materials into the women's tale, along with the story of the disastrous masterpiece of a French poet, and a writer's notations about her daily commute and the lake behind her house. Then a new crime is revealed. Ink is an illuminating meditation on what it means to bear witness.
152 pages, Hardcover
Published January 24, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 8, 2022
I was given the opportunity to read this novel before its release. This was my early praise:
Angela Woodward’s novel "Ink" shows us how, even when the evil is shocking—in this case the torture of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison—the mechanisms by which it’s processed and received can render it banal. It is by reverse-engineering this muffling through collocation of the testimonies with office politics, workaday busyness, Netflix thrillers, and histories of the materials of writing that Woodward un-disappears the ink. Reflecting on the “failure” of Francis Ponge’s "Soap," this novel curses all cleansers, all fresheners, all distractions, all entertainment, willing our national stains to set. Reading this book… it’s like I’d forgotten novels could be provocative.
Angela Woodward’s novel "Ink" shows us how, even when the evil is shocking—in this case the torture of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison—the mechanisms by which it’s processed and received can render it banal. It is by reverse-engineering this muffling through collocation of the testimonies with office politics, workaday busyness, Netflix thrillers, and histories of the materials of writing that Woodward un-disappears the ink. Reflecting on the “failure” of Francis Ponge’s "Soap," this novel curses all cleansers, all fresheners, all distractions, all entertainment, willing our national stains to set. Reading this book… it’s like I’d forgotten novels could be provocative.
January 4, 2024
Oft the mundanity that seeps into this novella is haunting. More terrifyingly, it makes you realise how the reader is also desensitised to it throughout. Well realised and very dark when extrapolated to our reality.
March 13, 2025
Interesting literary device. Well written but no strong plot.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews