Ink

Woodward (Natural Wonders) spins a muddled story of two transcriptionists who document the testimony of torture victims at Abu Ghraib. Sylvia and Marina work in a windowless office that smells of urine and chemicals, where they use IBM Selectric typewriters rather than computers, adding to the drudgery. Sylvia worries about affording her teenage son’s acne medication, while Marina is desperate to find a man. Sylvia becomes obsessed with the soap in the restroom, the smells in the office, and the hiss of silence in her headphones. Interspersed are repeated brief lines of testimony (“They took me into a room and beat me”) as well as Woodward’s metafictional references to “the writer,” which amount to musings on subjects such as French Resistance poet Francis Ponge and a sketchy outline of Woodward’s ambition for bringing together the subject matter: “The writer has been working with this material for quite some time. What astonishes her is the way it lies around, available to any of us.” A charitable reader might make connections between Sylvia and Marina’s workday hell and the horror of Abu Ghraib, but those who note the obvious asymmetry between the two will be left wondering what it’s all for. This doesn’t quite come together. (Jan.)