Reviews tagging 'Death'

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

17 reviews

lynxpardinus's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective tense

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual content, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Toxic relationship, Gaslighting, Lesbophobia, Medical content, and Vomit

Moderate: Animal death, Religious bigotry, Sexual harassment, Infidelity, Biphobia, Fire/Fire injury, Torture, Death, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Racism, Sexual assault, Rape, Animal cruelty, Body shaming, and Confinement

Minor: Dementia, Pandemic/Epidemic, War, Bullying, Gun violence, and Stalking

charliewarliee's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.25

In The Dream House is a beautiful memoir by Carmen Maria Machado. The writing style is beautifully poetic and the vocabulary that Machado uses is absolutely stunning. I will say that this is easily read in mass chunks, and I ended up taking a break from this book because the vocab was just a lot. It’s incredibly complex and at times hard to understand. Overall, a very good book.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Alcohol, Child abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Bullying, Sexism, Suicide, Death, Grief, Homophobia, Gaslighting, and Medical content

Moderate: Animal death and Vomit

scifi_rat's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful reflective tense fast-paced

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Lesbophobia, Domestic abuse, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, and Homophobia

Minor: Death, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Misogyny, Sexism, Infidelity, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Biphobia, Alcohol, Blood, Bullying, Cancer, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Vomit, Fatphobia, Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Cursing, Grief, Pregnancy, Religious bigotry, and Torture

erica_reads_things's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.75

I absolutely adore this book. Right off the bat I would have given it 5⭐, but I listened to it on audiobook. And as much as I love listening to especially memoirs read by the authors, this text was a bit hard to follow at first on audiobook. I plan on reading a paper copy soon and will likely give it a full 5. 

I loved the narrative style and tropes of the Dream House once I got used to the flow. I really appreciated how Carmen held the complexities of domestic violence and the topic and experiences within the queer community. This text will absolutely remain an important work in queer narratives. So well done. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, and Sexual content

Moderate: Homophobia, Death, Hate crime, Alcohol, Biphobia, Lesbophobia, Body shaming, and Stalking

Minor: Injury/Injury detail and Fatphobia

maess's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Infidelity, Misogyny, Outing, Sexism, Alcohol, Animal death, Blood, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Vomit

thebigemmt505's review

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

“Clarity is an intoxicating drug, and you spend almost two years without it, believing you were losing your mind, believing you were the monster, and you want something black and white more than you’ve ever wanted anything in the world.”

In The Dream House is a memoir from the author Carmen Maria Machado that details her experience with an abusive, queer relationship. It uses narrative tropes to explore the complex perspectives and emotions from this time in her life, with each chapter introducing a new trope. 

In The Dream House is incredibly written. Not only does it show an impressive knowledge of literature and queer history, but the knowledge is used not in a pretentious way, but instead is used to deeply and profoundly explore the many complicated feelings around an abusive relationship. Many sentences are beautifully sad and achingly relatable, while others are darkly funny. The order of the story and the choice to often interrupt the narrative is unique and genuine, as if we follow Machado’s exact lines of thinking. The pacing is relatively well done, and the recounting flows smoothly. 

The trope structure does get a bit stale after awhile. The chapters are short, and because each chapter is short, the punches feel a bit less punchy in the later chapters. Granted, there’s only so much “punch” to be expected from an autobiographical story, so it’s not a massive criticism. There are also moments of repetition that feel a bit unnecessary. The ending is a bit messy, though it was probably intentional (and my bias shows given I’m a “clear beginning clear ending” person.) 

On a personal note, my own traumatic history fortunately lacks an abusive relationship, despite my many brushes with horrible people and traumatizing events. Even despite this, the book offered so much solace in its depiction of queer interpersonal conflict and abuse. It’s true that the queer community is more hesitant to expose its humanity to the world, dark and disgusting and horrific as it can be (like all of humanity ever), and having had my share of not-so-great gay community experiences myself it’s nice to see it explored in this book. In addition, so much of the talk on trauma is raw and real and too familiar. The pain of and shame and self-blame are all such familiar feelings. It’s heartbreaking to read and to know we’re not all alone. 

“I speak into the silence. I toss the stone of my story into a vast crevice and measure the emptiness by its small sound.” 

It’s an emptiness that I hope will be filled by more books like this one. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Car accident, Death, and Drug use

sapphicmuscaria's review

dark hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

love book

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Drug use

Minor: Murder, Torture, Panic attacks/disorders, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Gaslighting, Body shaming, Car accident, Blood, Sexual content, Homophobia, Bullying, Sexism, Racism, Misogyny, Infidelity, Sexual harassment, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Death, Cursing, Colonisation, and Suicidal thoughts

bashsbooks's review against another edition

challenging emotional tense fast-paced

5.0

Machado has such a poetic way of writing prose, which is one of my favorite things about reading her work. This memoir is written like no other I've encountered, and it's easy to understand why: in telling sharing her own experience of domestic abuse, Machado is pushing against cultural notions that women cannot hurt each other, that abuse only comes from men, and if queer women admit their queer women partners have hurt them, then they're damaging the community's reputation. In the Dream House does an excellent job grappling with All Of That and more. I've read many stories that feature abuse (both nonfiction and fiction) and none have so radically changed my perception of it as this book has.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Panic attacks/disorders, Toxic relationship, Cursing, and Sexual content

Moderate: Body shaming, Biphobia, Fatphobia, Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Mental illness, Sexual violence, Misogyny, Alcohol, and Homophobia

Minor: Dementia, Death, and Physical abuse

weelowbee's review

dark emotional funny reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.75

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. The author does a great job of weaving in historical and pop culture into her reflections of her experiences. It took a moment for me to adjust to how the captures were structured. The only reason this isn’t a 5/5 for me is while the structure worked, I don’t think it was my favorite.

One of my favorite parts was the “choose your own adventure” section. The action of flipping through the pages conveyed what I think the author was going for.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, and Sexual violence

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury and Death

Minor: Cancer and Death

rieviolet's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative medium-paced

3.5

This book deals with an extremely important topic that needs to be voiced and discussed. That said, as a piece of work itself, I liked it so-so. 

I did not get along with the narrative structure, I found the rapid-fire succession of chapters (supposed to show different genres and narrative styles) too much disjointed and confusing. The writing style is a bit too much experimental for me.

I liked much more the chapters that were "essay-like", exploring queer history and theory. However, I think that this mixing of informative chapters together with more literary and elaborately written ones was a bit jarring, it felt like two different books mashed up.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Murder, Lesbophobia, Body horror, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, and Violence

Moderate: Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Fatphobia, Alcohol, Animal death, Child abuse, Abandonment, Mental illness, Sexism, Death, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Gun violence, Medical content, Drug abuse, Torture, Cursing, Car accident, Biphobia, Sexual assault, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Sexual violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Pregnancy, Forced institutionalization, Racism, Bullying, Transphobia, Adult/minor relationship, Religious bigotry, Infidelity, Alcoholism, Suicide, and Dementia