Paperback, 272 pages
English language
Published Feb. 26, 2020 by Graywolf Press.
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.
And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope―the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman―through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. …
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.
And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope―the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman―through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.
Machado's excellent prose, humour, vulnerability, and the autobiographical narrative of abuse and emotional manipulation make this one of the best memoirs I've ever read.
Places are never just places in a piece of writing. If they are, the author has failed. Setting is not inert. It is activated by point of view.
This was a really difficult read for me, mostly because of the subject matter. The other did an excellent job conveying how it feels to be living in an abusive relationship: the visceral lack of safety, the walking on eggshells, the losing touch with what's real about your own self. This is a prime example of why memoirs as a genre fascinate me: I can't imagine how brave a person must be to write about these experiences so candidly.
The narrative isn't quite linear, just like both the recovery from this sort of trauma and the trajectories of getting into this sort of situations are never quite linear. The whole book reads almost as a collection of essays or journal entries, but …
Places are never just places in a piece of writing. If they are, the author has failed. Setting is not inert. It is activated by point of view.
I connected with the literary styling of this memoir and it had a deep resonance with my experiences. I find indirect prose does a much more effective job at communicating the things in life that can’t be communicated. There’s plenty of directness too, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg on the horizon. The real damage is beneath the surface; invisible, suffocating.
This book got under my skin and won't let go. Sure it's moving, devastating, witty, but honestly reading it is such a particular experience that words run short.
Something I specially liked: obviously it's a memoir but it yanks you from one genre to another (i.e. from horror to comedy). It couldn't work in any other way. The shifts keep you on your toes; they reflect the uncertainty of an abusive relationship while offering a sense of hope in a harrowing journey.
And the structure is so smart! Each chapter-vignette, each quote and footnote and heading are bricks to build a new canon. Because the author couldn't find a context in which to make sense of her experience, she created one herself (while gifting us with a much-needed precedent). No more "archival silence".
None of this makes it hard to follow or takes you away from the story. The writing …
This book got under my skin and won't let go. Sure it's moving, devastating, witty, but honestly reading it is such a particular experience that words run short.
Something I specially liked: obviously it's a memoir but it yanks you from one genre to another (i.e. from horror to comedy). It couldn't work in any other way. The shifts keep you on your toes; they reflect the uncertainty of an abusive relationship while offering a sense of hope in a harrowing journey.
And the structure is so smart! Each chapter-vignette, each quote and footnote and heading are bricks to build a new canon. Because the author couldn't find a context in which to make sense of her experience, she created one herself (while gifting us with a much-needed precedent). No more "archival silence".
None of this makes it hard to follow or takes you away from the story. The writing is bewitching at times, always rich in feelings. I want to read everything Carmen Maria Machado has ever written.
"In her essay “Venus in Two Acts,” on the dearth of contemporaneous African accounts of slavery, Saidiya Hartman talks about the “violence of the archive.” This concept—also called “archival silence”—illustrates a difficult truth: sometimes stories are destroyed, and sometimes they are never uttered in the first place; either way something very large is irrevocably missing from our collective histories."
A very important read. This book tells a story for the archives, a story about domestic violence in a lesbian relationship. The violence that the author experienced in her own relationship. It is part autobiography, part essay, part fable, part manifesto - all while going back to the figure of "The Dream House" - the (paradoxical) name that is given to the physical representation of the abuse.
It is a political act, to tell such a story, and we must listen, we must listen and be aware. Violence, abuse, terrible people, …
"In her essay “Venus in Two Acts,” on the dearth of contemporaneous African accounts of slavery, Saidiya Hartman talks about the “violence of the archive.” This concept—also called “archival silence”—illustrates a difficult truth: sometimes stories are destroyed, and sometimes they are never uttered in the first place; either way something very large is irrevocably missing from our collective histories."
A very important read. This book tells a story for the archives, a story about domestic violence in a lesbian relationship. The violence that the author experienced in her own relationship. It is part autobiography, part essay, part fable, part manifesto - all while going back to the figure of "The Dream House" - the (paradoxical) name that is given to the physical representation of the abuse.
It is a political act, to tell such a story, and we must listen, we must listen and be aware. Violence, abuse, terrible people, they also belong in our (alleged) queer utopias and we must see it, recognize it, and talk about it. Many stories by women have been lost. Many more by lesbians. And even more by lesbian victims of abuse. Their stories must be told - because, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to see it, did it really fall?
On another note, it was truly a harrowing experience to read not only about the abuse that she experienced, but of the inner workings of her mind, of the mind of a victim of domestic violence. There are such powerful mechanisms at work, mechanisms that are so powerful that they can warp one's entire reality. It is scary to think that it can happen, slowly, and then all at once.
A must read for lesbians doing! their! homework!!!!
Carmen María Machado's In the Dream House was book #8 in my 2022 journey to explore works challenged or removed from Texas libraries or schools. carmenmariamachado.com/in-the-dream-house
I am afflicted with the librarian's obsession with footnotes, and was fascinated with the way Machado wove her citations of a particular source into almost another layer of narrative, like the voice of the Greek chorus.
I really liked the writing style of the author. I feel a little guilty for finding these memoirs about abusive relationships so fascinating (I read I’m Glad My Mom Died recently), but they’re also a good tool for my awareness in my own relationships.
"Queer folks fail each other too."
I feel less bad about rating this 3 stars since it’s doing so well in general! But some of this didn’t work for me.
I did relate to her story a teeny bit because I went through an emotionally manipulative relationship, though not as bad as what she describes here. Some of what she described really resonated with me, especially when she talked about how vague it is, how easy it is to second guess yourself and for others to second guess your version of events. Maybe it wasn’t /that/ bad, etc, etc.
It’s also, of course, quite an achievement to write this down, to be willing to share this. I appreciate what Machado was willing to do here.
What I didn’t like were mainly stylistic choices that are not my taste, but could very well be what a lot of other people adore. I do not like what I …
I feel less bad about rating this 3 stars since it’s doing so well in general! But some of this didn’t work for me.
I did relate to her story a teeny bit because I went through an emotionally manipulative relationship, though not as bad as what she describes here. Some of what she described really resonated with me, especially when she talked about how vague it is, how easy it is to second guess yourself and for others to second guess your version of events. Maybe it wasn’t /that/ bad, etc, etc.
It’s also, of course, quite an achievement to write this down, to be willing to share this. I appreciate what Machado was willing to do here.
What I didn’t like were mainly stylistic choices that are not my taste, but could very well be what a lot of other people adore. I do not like what I call “overwrought” writing. Lots of poetic description, metaphors. She also chose to write it in an experimental way with “Dream House as x” chapters, bringing in a lot of literary devices and tropes. I guess?? It didn’t seem to actually impact the chapters that much. I don’t think that added anything to the story and just made it a book that tried to do too much.
She includes essay type content in here as well but having just read The Collected Schizophrenias, I enjoyed the way that one provided information and memoir together much more. It felt more jarring and disconnected in Machado’s book.
Finally, unfortunately I listened to the audiobook, which was read by Machado, and I was not a fan of her reading it. Being a good writer does not make one a good narrator. She’s not monotone, but there’s a cadence to her reading that repeats over and over and over again. It’s weirdly wearying to listen to. That was hard to look past!
I loved this book and I couldn't read it in a single sitting because it was intense and brought me thoughts of a past relationship that could have gone down that path.
I recommend it because machado so skillfully lists all the red flags without calling them such, but explores them in detail and how each element manifests itself, or creeps up on you and you don't realize until you're in the thick of it.
I recommed it, and will gift this book to friends.
2 1/2 stars.
It was okay. Nothing earth shattering. The differing literary styles inwhich the author writes this book seemed heavy handed and didn't really do anything for me. And, yes of course there could be domestic abuse in lesbian relationships. Duh. Humans are flawed and capable of all kinds of atrocities as history can attest. so... Not surprising.
By turns devastating, alluring, repugnant, romantic, and horrific, this memoir (series of memoirs?) explores exciting territory of expression while telling a captivating story.
I so desperately want to be able to write a review that will do this justice and convince who ever reads it to pick this up right away, but I do not think I can, and maybe that is enough. This was not a satisfying book (maybe because I do not need the catharsis, never having lived anything close to this level of emotional abuse) and I found myself hoping against hope that the footnotes sprinkled with fairy tale references would bring some salvation, but instead they simply held up a mirror to the world. I'm going to be thinking about this, both the form and the content, for a long long time.
it's rare for formal experimentalism to feel as utterly necessary for any work, let alone a work of autobiography
One of the most difficult books (content-wise), I've ever read, and also one of the most important.
