The Writing Retreat

Julia Bartz

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Blood

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.

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

8,800+ In-Depth Study Guides
4,700+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
Downloadable PDFs

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. Later still, the reader learns that Alex has pushed Wren, ever so slightly, off said stairs. The blood that she spills at this moment signifies the life leaving their relationship.

During Roza’s retreat, yet more blood is fatally spilled. When Alex arrives at the retreat, she accepts a glass of wine that looks like “dark maroon, the type that always reminded me of blood” (41). While she tries to ignore “the morbid connection” (41), the wine foreshadows the murders that shatter Roza’s legend and the illusion of her retreat. Zoe’s murder likewise leaves a bloodstain on the floor just outside the cell where the other women are held captive. It is left there as a sign, a reminder of what might befall them should they attempt escape.

Blackbriar

Roza’s estate announces the author’s Gothic intentions: one of the hallmarks of the Gothic novel is the gloomy, isolated, and preferably haunted house that serves as the story’s central setting. When Alex and Poppy arrive at the station, the driver hired to take them to Blackbriar immediately notes that the place is “[p]retty isolated, though,” and Poppy gleefully exclaims that she is “such a sucker for haunted houses” (33). She and Alex relay how it came to be haunted after the mysterious deaths of the young spiritualist Daphne and her older, wealthy husband. The closest dwelling to the shadowy estate is a nunnery, another common Gothic trope, wherein nunneries and monasteries are often places of unpleasant secrets and evil intentions.

Blackbriar is personified throughout, its looming presence functioning as a character in its own right. Personified settings are a staple of Gothic fiction. When Alex first sees the place, she feels its power: “The Victorian fortress towered over us, magnificent and proud […] It unsettled me, like looking at eyes rolled up in a head” (36). Those eyes are turned inward, symbolizing the surveillance under which the women will unwittingly be monitored. Alex later fears that her writing about Daphne and Lamia has awakened something best left sleeping within the bowels of Blackbriar: “Maybe it was this house. Maybe there was something here, some remnant from Daphne’s time” (173). She uses this to explain away her hallucinated sex with the demon Lamia. Alex also notes, while searching for the secret room in the basement, “Basements were symbolic. They held all the junk we didn’t want to look at” (173). Indeed, this is where she discovers the truth about Roza and her intentions: truths she never really wanted to uncover about her beloved artistic mentor. Blackbriar is an extension of Roza’s plan and brand, a mysterious, isolated estate ripe for the manipulation of young, impressionable acolytes. As with most Gothic novels, the truth is many degrees less strange than whatever characters have imagined they fear.

Books Within Books

Books are both important symbolic objects and metaphorical points of reference. As solid, physical realities, books are the fulfillment of dreams and desires—not to mention financial solvency. For these writers, a published book signifies not only the ego’s greatest achievement but also a marketable product to burnish reputations and fill pocketbooks. Near the beginning of the novel, Alex’s desire for publication is palpable: “What would it feel like to hold your own book in your hands for the first time? For it to be a physical object, a thing that people paid for?” (9). The ideas of creative accomplishment and financial success are intimately bound together; this is not merely a journey toward meaningful art. Perhaps this explains why Roza Vallo is such a seductive benefactor: Her books sell on the bankability of her name. Her own library represents the covetousness of the collector. It contains “more books than anyone could read in a lifetime” (39). The books’ physical presence bolsters her credibility and reputation.

The mirroring and multiplication of texts throughout the novel reinforce Bartz’s preoccupation with the act of writing and the implications of authority. Roza’s novels provide the backdrop for Alex’s fascination with (and, vicariously, the reader’s interest in) “Roza Vallo,” famous author, as well as the plot itself. Roza’s many titles are, of course, penned by other authors: Devil’s Tongue was stolen from Roza’s best friend, Mila, as Roza slowly poisoned her; Lion’s Rose was written by Zoe’s aunt, Lucy, who was murdered; Maiden Pink is Taylor’s sacrificial work. Each book has its own lurid backstory, which propels the plot forward. Alex’s book, The Great Commission, parallels the events within The Writing Retreat, its excerpts nestled within the larger novel like Russian nesting dolls. To write it, Alex must also conduct research within other (fictionalized) books about Daphne’s and Blackbriar’s history. Poppy/Zoe’s disappearance leads to the group’s discovery that she has been plagiarizing an advance reader’s copy of a novel entitled The Knowing. All of these books are key to untangling the novel.