Structure

Corrections in Ink divides Blakinger's story into 27 short chapters. Each chapter begins with a quick announcement of the setting followed by the month and year of the recollections. Each successive chapter jumps back or forward in time; the setting often changes abruptly as well. Sometimes, when the story is especially painful, Blakinger will place two chapters back to back in the same location. Chapters 15 and 16 follow this plan with both chapters taking place in the Tompkins County Jail, the first in May of 2011 and the next in July 2011. Within these pages, Blakinger details a range of fears--everything from the fear of her marriage crumbling to her greatest fear of all, being placed in solitary confinement.

At the start of each new chapter, Blakinger meditates broadly upon the psychological pains of jail. Chapter 16 again is a good model of this architecture. Before Blakinger details the horrors of being...