Ink Vine by Elizabeth Broadbent is not strictly speaking a horror story, but really it is a horror story. A coming-of-age slash coming-out narrative set in a small town in South Carolina, the horrors that pervade it are very human and very familiar.
Ink Vine the story of Emerald ‘Emmy’ Joiner, a 20 year old scaredy-bisexual who works as a stripper, under the name ‘Luna’. She is also white trash. With a bad-tempered, impossible-to-satisfy mother, a vitriolic sister, a younger brother to take care of, and a car on the constant verge of breaking down, Emmy’s prospects are grim. Her one escape, a place where she is free from the dreariness and drudgery of her life is the swamp.
Emmy’s life takes a sharp turn when one day, while she is lounging under the gnarled trees in the swamp, she meets Zara. Zara is beautiful, forward, and mysterious, and sports beautiful vine-like tattoos all over her body. She is a complete enigma, offering only vague half-answers to Emmy’s questions about herself.
Starved for affection and increasingly isolated from the people in her life, Emmy throws caution to the wind and pursues an ever more intense relationship with the mysterious woman from the swamp. But while a whimsical sapphic affair in the midst of the most splendid natural scenery the South can offer sounds magical, all magic has its price.
Writing and Story
Elizabeth Broadbent delivers a delicious morsel in this novella, a praiseworthy achievement for her debut in long-form fiction. The story being narrated from the first person, it is important to establish a strong character voice, and this Broadbent does well. Emmy is convincingly a contemporary lower-class, poorly-educated sex worker without becoming obnoxious or distracting with the lingo. Some faithfulness is, perhaps, sacrificed for the sake of vivid descriptions of both the South Carolina swamps and forests, and for the smoky and noisy run-down strip club.
However, this sacrifice enhances the narrative voice and makes the story overall more pleasurable to read.
This being a novella, the story is fairly simple and straightforward, though there are a few turns that might surprise you. Broadbent paints a picture of contrasts, bringing to life on one hand a colourful swampland full of life, and on the other dreary and drab locals of small-town America. The gas station, the strip club, the parking lots, all brim with leering, sleazy men. Home offers no escape to Emmy either, cramped and run-down as it is, her mother always berating her for the kind of work Emmy does (instead of “honest work” at a factory). It is no wonder, then, that Emmy increasingly and more desperately turns to the allure of the swamp, and of Zara. Whether the embrace of the green-eyed girl will bring her fortune or tragedy remains ambiguous up to the very end, which I count as a big plus.
Pros
Apart from the pacing, which proceeds in an exponential fashion and keeps you on the edge of your seat, atmosphere is definitely the greatest strength of Ink Vine. As said before, despite its relative brevity Ink Vine absolutely teems with life, of all kinds, and pulls the reader into its world from the very first pages.
Another noteworthy strength of the story is an aspect of Emmy’s character development, namely in regards to close-mindedness and rejection of one’s otherness. This is explored through all of her relationships, familial and at work, and most importantly in her affair with Zara, packing a decent punch in its modest page-count.
Cons
There are no real cons to Ink Vine, save perhaps its length. I know I am repeating myself, but I believe the story would have been even more powerful had it been a few dozen pages longer. This would pack even more punch to its thematic catharsis, and allow for a more flashed-out, natural development of the romance between Emmy and Zara. But this is more of a personal nitpick, rather than an actual flaw.
The Conclusion
Ink Vine is not a story for everybody. It deals with heavy, even depressing themes which will likely be very familiar to people who grew up queer in a small town of small-minded people. The main character is a sex worker, constantly harassed by men and berated by her own family. The conclusion to the story might not be what you expected from its premise. But if you are willing to brave these odds, Ink Vine will draw you in and reward you with strange beauty, stark and gentle at once. Like a swamp. There are dangers here, but also great rewards, if one is brave enough. I, for one, am looking forward to reading more from Elizabeth Broadbent and warmly recommend this enthralling novella.
Excerpt from Ink Vine by Elizabeth Broadbent
I wanted her so much, but other thoughts barged in. Zara hadn’t told me much about herself—where she lived, how old she was. What if she just liked coming out here and hooking up? Maybe it wasn’t me she liked. Maybe she liked anybody rather than somebody. When you’re lonely, you’ll latch onto anything. I couldn’t stop wondering about that, and I pulled back.
“What?” Zara’s arched brows drew together, an adorable confusion.
“What’s wrong?”
“Where d’you live?” I asked.
Her nose wrinkled. “I told you. Not far from here.”
I forced myself to sit up. I wanted to keep kissing her, but fear rolled in my belly. If this wasn’t something I wanted, better to figure that out right away. I had to say it. She might think I didn’t like her, and only that gave me enough guts to speak. “I don’t know much about you,” I admitted.
“Oh, Emerald.” Her laughter was like wind in the trees. “You’re so worried about so many things that don’t matter. I swear, I really like you. Is that so hard to believe?”
“What if it was?” I asked. “If you liked me, you’d tell me more about you.”
“Okay.” She shoved up. Her dress bunched on her thighs, and those vines did go all the way up, at least as far as I could tell. “I’m boring. I feed the birds. Did you know there are ivory-billed woodpeckers way, way deep in the forest? People don’t believe it but it’s true. They’re back there. They aren’t gone.”
I didn’t know much about those, but I heard they were extinct. “Really?”
“Yeah. That’s why we have to protect places like this. People think they can take and take and take. They think they can burn oil and kill trees and it won’t matter. There are otters in these creeks. They won’t live in polluted water. If we don’t stop…” And she was off. Zara told me about people throwing trash from their cars, and dumping tires in the woods, and carving their names on trees. “There were so many fireflies once,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe it, Emerald. They’d all light up at once, and whole fields would turn bright as day.”
Mama said once that when she was a little girl, she scooped fireflies into jars, and they lit her room all night long. Lower Congaree is famous for its fireflies—we’re one of the only places on earth where they blink at the same time, and tourists come from far away to see them. Strange how one person’s everyday is someone else’s miracle. Zara was almost in tears describing those pretty bugs. When she mentioned Carolina parakeets, how we’d torn up forests and starved those flocks of rainbow birds, her tears spilled over.
I picked up her hand. “It’s awful,” I said.
“It’s horrible.” She swiped at her nose. “And no one cares, Emerald. They don’t care about it at all. I’m so angry. No one listens.”
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Bits and Bobs
ISBN number: 9798879923919
Publisher: Undertaker Books
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