What is the author's style in the novel, The Weight of Ink?

The Weight of Ink uses extensive historical references, sentence structure and ways of speech; this adds verisimilitude to Ester’s conversation, internal thoughts and writings. In the Author’s Note, Kadish outlines the methods by which she establishes authenticity in Ester’s narrative. For instance, Ester’s fictitious warnings to Mary about love contain an allusion to Mary Astell’s 1666 remarks on marriage. In composing fictitious letters from Ester to Spinoza, Kadish consulted texts such as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave us Modernity, and Steven Nadler’s Spinoza: A Life and Spinoza’s Heresy. Kadish conducted years of in-depth historical research in the process of writing her novel, allowing for intense visualization of setting. In particular, she creates vivid imagery of plague-stricken London through descriptions of the spotted faces of the dead, doors upon doors marked with white crosses and paranoid behavior.

The novel features extensive historical terminology and translations in the narratives of Helen and Aaron; weaving their passion for history into descriptions that convey authority within their field. Helen’s first impressions of the Eastons’ manor present her as a historical expert, as she is able to verify its late seventeenth-century origin by appearance: “the ornamented eaves, the inset stone carvings midway up the façade of soft-cornered bricks … All were unmistakable” (8). Aaron describes the grand staircase with similarly rich descriptions: “the staircase was opulence written in wood. The broad treads ascended between dark carved panels featuring roses and vines and abundant fruit baskets” (34). The perspectives of professor and student further the author’s didactic methods, used to teach readers a variety of historical nuances associated with architecture, types of ink, paper, and binding, and Jewish texts.