50 pages • 1 hour read
Emma TörzsInk Blood Sister Scribe
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Family, Estrangement, and Personal Identity
Ink Blood Sister Scribe explores the ways perceptions of familial relationships and estrangements affect personal identity. Esther and Joanna function as foils in their circumstances and estrangement but move toward reconciliation; both Nicholas and Esther experience motherlessness as part of their identity and seek a connection with Maram, who is reluctant to fill maternal roles. Törzs connects familial relationships, with a focus on absence and estrangement, with conceptions of personal identity throughout the novel. The novel therefore emphasizes the intersection between how individuals conceptualize their relationships with family members and how they conceptualize themselves.
The relationship between Esther and Joanna is central to the novel’s plot and relationship to its magical elements. Physically, they are estranged by Esther’s need to travel and Joanna’s need to protect the books in Vermont. Joanna can hear magical books but cannot write magic, and Esther is immune to magic but is a Scribe who can write it; these facts are central to both of their identities, as well as how they think about their estrangement. The realization of their difference is described as “a turning point […] a line drawn between her sister, who could not only read magic but also hear it, and Esther herself, who could not” (55). Both Esther’s and Joanna’s identities are framed in relation to their differences and similarities. Esther reflects on having been “hypnotized by their sameness” as children (53), including the facts that “They both loved chewing lemon peels and watermelon rinds, loved pictures of goats but not actual goats […] They disliked zippers, ham, the word ‘milk,’ flute music, the gurgling sound of the refrigerator” (53). However, Esther eventually focused more on their differences, and particularly her assumption that she had no magical abilities. Joanna, meanwhile, is angry at Esther for leaving with no explanation. In this way, Esther and Joanna understand themselves by understanding each other; their struggles with their identities and circumstances are related to a lack of understanding of the other.
Both Nicholas and Esther experience a desire to connect with Maram, as a stand-in and birth mother, respectively. While Esther has had a close relationship with Cecily throughout her life, she considers her motherlessness part of her identity: “Her motherlessness was intrinsic to her sense of self, and her sense of self was all she’d had these many years alone” (329). In this passage, Törzs emphasizes that one’s sense of self is connected to family relationships, but also that it can be an anchor when separated from family. Similarly, Nicholas acknowledges that Maram is the closest thing he has experienced to a maternal figure, though she refuses to fill that role. His sense of self is based in large part on the fact that those with whom he is closest, Richard and Maram, are in the employ of the Library; as such, his character development includes a focus on forming connections with Esther, Collins, and Joanna as the novel progresses. Törzs thus suggests that how one processes complex family relationships contributes to the formation of individual identity.
The Magic of Books
Törzs creates a layered representation of the magical capabilities of books throughout Ink Blood Sister Scribe to suggest that the written word is both literally and figuratively transformative. The fact that the book is about books and includes several metafictional references to its own narrative, including Shakespearean acts, creates a self-aware experience for the reader, who is invited to think about their own relationship to books. In addition to the supernatural capabilities of books in the novel, Törzs emphasizes the figurative magic of books to suggest that stories and language have power, whether they are literally magical or not.
Törzs suggests that the written word is magical in a figurative sense because there are innumerable possible narratives, and stories have a transformational and transportive capacity. Törzs describes novels as books “with a very different kind of power” (112), and Joanna recalls “reading a novel about faraway misty islands and magic none of her father’s books could ever summon” (110). When Esther visits Mexico City bookstores, she describes them as feeling magical, but “Not the kind of magic Esther had grown up with but the kind she’d read about in novels, the kind that was all possibility” (221). This type of magic is characterized by choice and possibility, which Joanna and Esther each lack in some capacity.
Each of the novel’s protagonists has a close relationship to non-magical books and finds that those have their own kind of magic. Joanna’s love of romance novels highlights her loneliness and helps drive her toward forming connections and letting go of her isolation. She describes romance novels to Collins as being “about connection. About people who connect with one another against the odds—despite their differences, their flaws, their secrets” (354), which foreshadows the romantic connection the two eventually develop. Esther’s primary relationship to books is the Alejandra Gil novel that belonged to her mother, which she is in the process of translating at the beginning of the novel. The book is a cherished possession due to its connection to her mother, and she inscribes its title on her body: “tattooed across her collarbones […] ‘la ruta nos aportó’ on the right, ‘otro paso natural’ on the left” (17). Later in the novel, this language about paths enables Maram to secretly communicate with Esther, suggesting communication as a different kind of magic. Palindromes function as instances of magical language throughout the novel, with Maram selecting her pseudonym based on a love of palindromes, like the code phrase to enter her parents’ bookstore: “‘Sé verlas al revés.’ A palindrome. I know how to see them backward” (221). In this way, Törzs highlights the magic of language on a smaller, line-level scale. Nicholas also experiences the magic of a non-magical book in the form of his “gilded 1978 copy of The Three Musketeers” (92), which he uses to calm himself when he experiences nightmares: “a medicine to settle his nerves” (94). The idea of books as medicinal contributes another layer to the novel’s depiction of the written word as being transformative.
Books and language, then, serve to kindle transformation, forge and strengthen connections, and provide comfort during difficult times for the protagonists. Through metafictional elements and these unique experiences of non-magical books as magical, Törzs emphasizes the transformative power of the written word.
The Relationship Between Responsibility and Power
Throughout Ink Blood Sister Scribe, Törzs explores the distinctions between responsibility and power and represents the malicious use of power through Richard’s exploitation of Scribes. The novel also addresses an inexact correlation between magical power and power over others. Törzs represents the distinction between responsibility and a malicious use of power to emphasize the idea that human intention, rather than magical ability, is the decisive factor in whether power is deserved or exploited.
First, power is represented as complex and reflective of the world around it. Maram describes the Library as having power, but emphasizes that “power is always a reflection of the world that has created it, regardless of intention” (137). Both the idea of power as being reflective of society and the idea of collecting books to “keep them from the world, because the world misuses power” suggest external justifications for the library’s actions (137). For much of the novel, Nicholas subscribes to this type of indoctrination, empathizing with his uncle, who “inherited our family’s legacy. It’s a lot of responsibility. I should know, being next in line” (259). However, he must eventually confront the distinction between responsibility and power, represented by Esther’s reply that “‘It’s manufactured responsibility [...] Your family took that responsibility on purpose, just like my family did. You say ‘responsibility,’ I hear ‘power” (259). While Nicholas initially believes that power and responsibility are the same thing, his turning point as a character centers around his decision to end Richard’s immortality spell and manage the Library differently: Specifically, the novel concludes with the reading of a spell to end Richard’s restriction of magic to bloodlines. In this, Törzs emphasizes the difference between responsibility and power to suggest that real power requires responsibility to others, rather than exploitation of them.
Törzs also emphasizes the distinction between magical power and power over others through several interactions between Richard and Nicholas. While Nicholas is a Scribe, Richard has all the power. Richard is obsessed with power, referencing Nicholas’s power several times. When they try the magic carpet spell together, Richard says, “‘You did this, Nicholas [...] Your blood, your words. How does it feel? Do you feel powerful?’ ‘Yes!’ Nicholas shouted, because he did. But even more than powerful, what he felt was purely, sublimely happy” (175). The fact that Richard is focused on power, whereas Nicholas is focused on happiness, illustrates the difference between them. Similarly, Richard suggests that Nicholas felt powerless after being “attacked” in the car and so is “asserting power where [he] can—I quite understand. A natural reaction” (204). Nicholas eventually realizes that it was an “error of thinking, to believe himself the expert because he was the one with the power. Such an error of thinking to believe he had power in the first place” (340). In addition to characterizing Richard as an antagonist who is hyper-focused on power, the idea of Richard’s power over Nicholas trumping Nicholas’s magical power is both ironic and socially critical. Törzs suggests that exploitative power comes from malice, rather than real responsibility or even magical ability.
This theme is a key indication of Törzs’s use of the magical realism genre—particularly the distinction between magical power and actual power—to critique the idea of an elitist and exploitative establishment, which is represented by Richard’s management of the Library, failure to value human Scribes’ lives, and bloodline restrictions of magic.
