Reviews - Na casa dos sonhos

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21.5k reviews for:

Na casa dos sonhos

Carmen Maria Machado

4.52 AVERAGE

antreach's review against another edition

4.5

dark emotional informative reflective fast-paced

sara_woltz11's review against another edition

5.0

dark hopeful sad slow-paced

twilsonovi's review against another edition

5.0

One comment on the blurb said 'genre-busting' and that sounds about right. I don't read a lot of memoir but this not your ordinary biography. It's brilliant, elusive and full of tension, unhealthily heady euphoria, fear and grief. The many vignettes with their clever titles are a fantastic structure, or set of lenses, with which to begin an attempt at living Machado's experiences with her. Though they are all in their own way pregnant, overflowing with emotional history, they still create a sense of elusiveness of truth, reflecting the emotional whiplash, confusion and gaslighting experienced as part of an abusive relationship.

Beyond the experiences itself, which are of course the most important thing, this is also a very important and useful book for the way it weaves a survey of queer abuse, the more emotional (and, as she points out, more legal) aspects of domestic abuse generally, the queering of victims and perpetrators and the archetypes and preconceptions which blind us. In doing so she is breaking the 'archival silence' which is so eloquently described early in the book and connecting the people who, isolated or even imprisoned in their experiences, are floundering their way through the sinister hush.