She Treads Softly: Ink Ribbon Red

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Ink Ribbon Red

Ink Ribbon Red by Alex Pavesi
7/22/25; 320 pages
Henry Holt & Company

Ink Ribbon Red by Alex Pavesi is a recommended murder mystery where in the characters are writing murder mysteries.

A group of six friends gather together on a weekend to celebrate Anatol's thirtieth birthday in the Wiltshire countryside. The group plays a game Anatol's invented called Motive Method Death which requires everyone to choose two players and then write a story where one kills the other.

Once you start reading you will not be able to distinguish between reality and the stories the characters made up as both are shared in a random way in the novel. The start of each story gives clues to when the narrative that follows was written. This misdirection is a purposefully planned part of the reading experience, but at the beginning, before you figure out this is the case, it is annoying and off-putting.

The The group of characters are interesting, but would have benefited from more depth to their development. The writing is very good, and there are parts I really enjoyed, but the whole experience required more devotion to the experimental structural technique than I was willing to freely give.

Ink Ribbon Red may be a good choice for readers who like unique narrative structures in novels. Thanks to Henry Holt & Company for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.