moonbasket 's review for:

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

5.0

emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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There are few books in the world that have imprinted themselves on my soul. This book is one of them. I do not think I will ever forget this book. Rachel Kadish expertly wove the present and the past together to create a beautiful and poignant story of excellent prose. She uses third person limited along with some expository sections to tell the story. I have read many books that have tried to do what Kadish did in this book and only she has fully achieved her goal. 
The paths of our three main characters: Helen, Aaron, and Esther are interwoven and unique with parallels between them all and a satisfying conclusion for each of them. Despite being fictional, I also learned a lot from the historical surroundings of the book and I look forward to doing more research on the history of the Jewish diaspora in the 17th century.
This book will change your life and you should definitely read it as soon as you can. I rented the audiobook for free from my library and it was fantastic.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Antisemitism, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Outing, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child death, Death, Homophobia, Blood, Colonisation, Classism

Minor: Chronic illness, Misogyny, Rape, Excrement, Vomit, Car accident, Pregnancy

The book covers explicit descriptions of torture endured at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. It also covers the expansion of Jewish people in London in the 1660's, as such there is some explicit antisemitism. There is also explicit descriptions of the house fire that killed Esther's parents. There is minor alcohol drinking by most characters at one point or another.

There is explicit stories and flashbacks of Esther's mother being an emotionally abusive alcoholic. There is a lot of death. A good portion of the book happens during an out break of the plague and four major characters die by the end of the story. Mary gets pregnant and it's mentioned only so much as in descriptions of her body and clothes. There is a violent mob scene towards the end where Esther is violently groped on screen. It's a short mention, but it is brought up later in her happy future as a reference to potential PTSD. There is also an explicit scene of Alvarro being outed as gay in front of a mob of spectators. He's dragged home by his father and then impressed upon a ship.