The Writing Retreat

Content Warning: This section explores violent, abusive, sexual, and occult subject matter.

Blood functions as a motif throughout the novel, a stain to remind the characters of their past misdeeds and to warn them of future mischief. For example, the tie that binds—and breaks—the friendship between Alex and Wren is forged by blood, as if they were “blood sisters” or sisters by blood. Alex cements their friendship by sending Wren an email with a link to an article about Roza that analyzes “her novels’ use of period blood” as a feminist motif” (7). Alex’s intuitive knowledge that Wren would understand and relish this take indicates their compatibility. In retrospect, it reads as ironic: “Roza’s novels,” revered as feminist, are not actually Roza’s novels but manuscripts she stole from other women whom she either blackmailed or murdered “in cold blood.” Either way, Roza is vampirically draining the creative lifeblood from fellow women creatives.

In Alex’s remembrance, the fate of her friendship with Wren was also sealed by blood. “After all, the night of Wren’s birthday had ended in arcs of blood, splattering black in the moonlight” (8). The reader later discovers that Wren has fallen off the stairs onto her wineglass, severing a tendon in her hand.