Ink

A Novel

Angela Woodward

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813196558
• Print ISBN:
  9781985901391
  9780813196534

"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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Ink
• The Material
• Ink
• Ice
• Typists
• Ink
• Typists II
• Blood
• Audrey
• Netflix
• Netflix II
• Ink
• Illegibility
• Soap
• Soap II
• In Walgreens
• Mr. Right
• The Material II
• Alex
• Soap III
• Ice II
• The History of Ink
• Marina’s Date
• Show Choir Costume
• Urine
• Mr. Right Has a Name
• Netflix III
• The Flowers of Tarbes
• Gus and Jayda
• Urine II
• Urine III
• Show Choir Costume II
• Ink
• Ink
• Ice III
• Soap IV
• Ink
• Flowers
• Car Wash
• Blood II
• Urine IV
• Ink
• Sunnier
• Mute Objects of Expression
• Show Choir Costume III
• Ink
• Blood III
• Jayda
• Show Choir Concert
• Jordan’s Song
• The Material III
• Netflix IV
• Water
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Sources