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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 the two women who spend their days doing that neat typing. Sylvia and Marina, both single mothers, work in a suburban office building, transcribing tape recordings of witness statements describing 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's show choir costume-are a mundane backdrop to the violence represented by 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 unfinished 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 the two women who spend their days doing that neat typing. Sylvia and Marina, both single mothers, work in a suburban office building, transcribing tape recordings of witness statements describing 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's show choir costume-are a mundane backdrop to the violence represented by 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 unfinished 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.
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Reviews
"Like Tokarczuk's Flights, Woodward's crisp, clean prose moves quick-paced through place and time, weaving together a narrative from multiple threads: Angela Woodward's Ink is an engrossing, multifaceted narrative that questions how we witness, how we document, and ultimately how we understand life in all its manifestations, from humdrum to horror."
Jesi Bender, author of The Book of the Last Word and Kinderkrankenhaus
"Angela Woodward's Ink is a glorious melding of essay and novel, outrage and understanding. Think: Sebald, later Gerald Murnane, Lydia Davis. Brilliant, empathetic, and above all a pleasure to read."
Gabriel Blackwell, author of Doom Town and CORRECTION
"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 Woodw
Joe Sacksteder, author of Make/Shift and Driftless Quintet