Reviews with content warning for Drug use - Στο σπίτι των ονείρων

I read this entire book in one sitting and could not put it down. It’s beautiful, tragic, splintered, poetic, visceral, unique. I loved the references to movies and books throughout that really gave context to the author’s thoughts and experiences. I want to share this book with everyone I know!

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e_reader's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring tense fast-paced

5.0

I loved this book so so much. Machado has such a way with words, and you can tell. Memoir is pretty far out of my comfort zone, but this book put me right at ease. The concept is so created, and masterfully crafts a story depicting her life with The Woman in the Dream House (as Machado calls her). I would recommend this to anyone that enjoys reading about queer history, domestic violence through a queer lense, or just anyone looking for a book that departs from the typical memoir style. I would give this book 6 stars if I could!

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atmreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

I know I already listed the trigger warnings above, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to take those seriously. This book is dark, intense, emotional, and deals A LOT with trauma and traumatizing events. I cannot in good conscious recommend this book without telling all of you to keep in mind these trigger warnings and do what is mentally healthy for you.

I just need to say that I LOVED this book. It is incredibly well written, creatively told, and exquisitely presented. This novel is told through a series of vignettes, each one focusing on a different event told through the lense of a different trope. And my god it was such an immersive way to tell the story! Simply reading the header of “Dream House as ____” immediately had me intrigued.

Next, the themes. I know themes are often discussed in the context of works of fiction, but this novel had such great themes despite being someone’s real life. The focus on how abuse within LGBTQ+ relationships is often dismissed because “how could a woman abuse another woman??” I think that highlighting that abuse is not homogeneous and can happen in any relationship of any kind is a really important message to give. And to hear the perspective of someone caught in an abusive relationship who felt trapped with no way out is incredibly important, because I think many people, whether consciously or not, have this idea that if you’re in a bad situation you should just leave. It’s not that simple but to hear and see someone’s real, lived in experience is SO important.

Lastly, the lasting impact. This is a book that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. This book had me crying at 1 am and 1 pm, it had me thinking deeply about what Machado was saying. This is a book I’ll take with me through life, one that I’ll look back to as a distinct point in time. It is truly a work of art.

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emilywasbored's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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saintsunshine's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.25

Deeply engaging and often emotionally challenging, Carmen Maria Machado has crafted a wholely unique memoir in In the Dream House. Machado places her story of domestic abuse amid historical and cultural contexts that often ignores queer women. Dream House is as informative as it is personal, and I deeply enjoyed it. Though difficult to get through at times, Machado's poignant memoir will likely become a classic in the genre in years to come.

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heynonnynonnie's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

Hated|Disliked|Liked|Loved|Favorited

In the Dream House is a bold and experimental memoir unlike anything that I've read before. But like all things new and experimental, there's a strong element of confusion. What was the author's intent? When did the story begin? Why was this chapter here? What was the importance of this metaphor? Of this citation? Sometimes I sat with a chapter and read it over and over again to try to make sense of its meaning. Now that I'm done with the book, I think the author's intent is much more clear. It's not a linear story. It's a collection of short pieces that circle around and around a subject, a thesis, and only sometimes about an abusive relationship.
The author has a story to tell but has no language for it. She must invent one. The point of the story isn't her abusive relationship, it's that she has no way of framing it. She tries over and over again in each chapter to fit it into various tropes - like holding up a jewel to the light to inspect all its facets. Yet, she finds over and over again that there is no one narrative to tell her story. Every one explains an aspect but ultimately fails to fully contain her story.
We feel that something wrong has happened to her, but there is no law broken. There's no legal case to refer to. There's no piece of writing that explains what happened. No character archetype to fall back on. No narrative to allude to. And so her goal is to imagine an archive, a house, a structure in which her story can live. A place where her story exists among literary devices, allusions, and metaphors that build legitimacy that the story is seeking.
I think it's easy to mistake the sometimes second person tense as a weak attempt to create empathy. But it's not an attempt to blur the boundary between author and reader. It's a necessary disconnect in the text. An "I" author and a "you" victim that Machado switches between. A wall between the person she was and the person she is. A classification for her feelings and thought patterns. An Othering to in order to create the many character archetypes the victim falls into.
The book feels like both the building and the unravelling. It seeks to teach you how to read its text and keeps you away from its core. It's discovering the why of a ghost through the means of a haunted house.

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animalsmals's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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