In the Dream House

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 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, 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!!!!

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!