Reviews tagging 'Biphobia'

In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado

114 reviews

amberghinii's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Toxic relationship

Minor: Biphobia, Drug use, Homophobia, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Vomit, Lesbophobia, and Alcohol

mecmccann's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Wow. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Gaslighting

Minor: Biphobia, Bullying, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Grief, and Lesbophobia

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.

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Content Warnings

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

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

Minor: Death, Physical abuse, and Dementia

theshrew's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Biphobia, Homophobia, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, and Violence

literally_mint's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Lesbophobia, and Gaslighting

Minor: Biphobia, Body shaming, Cancer, Fatphobia, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Rape, Vomit, Dementia, Abandonment, and Alcohol

murrderdith's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

5.0

This memoir was so beautifully and unsparingly devastating. Machado is unflinching in her account of (as Machado notes herself) all of the "legal" ways a partner can abuse and diminish you while also rooting the narrative within a folkloric framework (she never names the Woman in the Dream House, the only character without one in the way that the villains of those first stories we learn never have names as we recognize them)--returning again and again to the tropes of these ur-texts. Her language moves from ethereal and gauzy to razor-sharp in a way that reinforces the whiplash experience of having a volatile, erratic partner. 

**I would recommend looking at the content warnings from other users before reading this book if you are at all concerned it may be a difficult read for you to work through. I will add some but it is a likely an incomplete list**

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Biphobia, Body shaming, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Lesbophobia, Gaslighting, and Alcohol

This is a memoir of domestic abuse. It is beautifully written but not necessarily something everyone is in the right place to read. That said, it could also serve as a text the reader recognizes themselves in. I think it can be worth reading painful, recognizable texts for this reason. Proceed with caution.

hailsmars's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Biphobia, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting

chalbu's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Biphobia and Grief

desr's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad fast-paced

5.0

Like the name implies it’s dream like and haunting. Lots of harsh realities. Some scenes are downright terrifying, but it’s an important read. It’s also interesting how this partially reads like a piece of speculative fiction. Memoirs usually are reactive or more purely introspective, but this had entire sections of wondering what could have been and leading the reader down wild what if rabbit holes. It seems almost natural now to include the speculative narratives we all naturally create when ruminating on past trauma.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Lesbophobia

Minor: Biphobia

elwirax's review against another edition

emotional reflective fast-paced

3.0

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

 

As this is a memoir my rating is not based on Machado's experience but rather the way it was structured and written as a whole. Please do not take this as direct criticism of how the author has chosen to cope and portray her trauma (despite how contradictory that sounds).

I don't really have any profound criticism of In the Dream House just minor personal dislikes. Something I couldn't really click with was the writing style particularly when it switched between first person and second person. I understand that this was used as a way to put the reader in the author's shoes and while I appreciate that, I also didn't feel connected due to the lack of internal monologues and in depth look into emotions. Another thing were the constant footnotes and references to media. There were clear parallels in say, Stranger by the Lake and Gaslight but I couldn't always connect them with the context of the author's experiences (although, maybe that was just me not looking deep enough into their significance). It's definitely an interesting addition to a memoir but sometimes the book didn't know whether it wanted to me a memoir or a critical analysis/ dissertation on how same sex relationships and violence have been portrayed in media. This resulted in choppy writing that ranged from really formal to rather simple and took away from the flow of the text. I think that while the references added a bit of nuance to the text and supported the author's experience, they also took away from it through the pages and pages of description that sometimes felt like filler. As a side note,  what was that mouse stomping scene about and the narcissism after finding out friend's roommate died in a fire?! A bit weird to me. 

Nevertheless, writing about her experience with an abusive, queer relationship must not have been easy. Hats of to Machado for writing about a topic that deserves more recognition than it recieves in the media. I also really liked the choose your own adventure part, though that is obviously not as important as the subject matter.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual content, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Biphobia, Fatphobia, and Mental illness

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Abandonment, and Sexual harassment