Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - In the Dream House

Machado's memoir is beautiful and brave, using creative a creative style in order to tell her story of abuse in a relationship with another woman.

Abuse among queer women is often overlooked and this book seeks remedy that with its portrayal of a real relationship and anecdotes about how queer people are expected to be better than cishet people in order to deserve rights, even though in reality we're human and humans are messy. I liked how Machado didn't just stick to her own story and also discussed the history of abuse cases between women and how lesbian rights movements dealt with it, adding to the educational element of the book.

The prose really elevates the story, making it feel more stream of conscious. This helped highlight the emotions one feels when dealing with abuse as Machado shows how she feels rather than tells. For example, Machado never refers to her abuser by name but rather as "the woman in the dream house." This makes her abuser feel inhuman which is a very real feeling victims can have and ties the abuse to a specific place which showcases how PTSD is often tied to physical places. Along with the stream of consciousness, the story is disjointed purposely. Leaping from memories about the relationship to synopses of TV show episodes that work as metaphors on abuse to history about queer women and abuse. This worked well for the vibes but at times made the narrative difficult to follow and understand.

In the Dream House is going on my list of powerful memoirs I'd recommend and by far one of the most creative I've read! I'd especially recommend it for people interested in learning about domestic abuse (especially what it's like between queer women) and the trauma it causes.

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talking_heads's review

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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dylan2219's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

I don't feel like I can give this book a star rating, given the intensity and importance of its subject matter and the critical role it plays in adding neglected narratives of queer wlw abuse to the archive, as Machado sets out in her prologue. Nonetheless, this book is a revelation: it's incredibly written, full of brilliant prose, and such a great experiment in structure and form, full of genius moments. Machado inverts the memoir in a way to tell a story that the form has long not given space to, and her immense success and emotional nakedness decries any criticism I'm tired of hearing of memoirs or creative non-fiction in general as somehow self-indulgent and narcissistic. Even if this book wasn't about such a critical topic, its narrative and stylistic genius itself gives it classic status. Brutal, brilliant, often very funny, sui generis.

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