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zoinkie's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Homophobia, Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Domestic abuse, and Gaslighting
bookishmillennial's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
disclaimer if you’ve read other reviews by me and are noticing a pattern: You’re correct that I don’t really give starred reviews because I don’t like leaving them. Most often, I will only leave them if I vehemently despised a book.
I enjoy most books for what they are, & I extract lessons from them all. Everyone’s reading experiences are subjective, so I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not, regardless if I add stars or not.
Find me on Instagram: @bookish.millennial or tiktok: @bookishmillennial
This was a powerful memoir full of vignettes -mostly in a linear fashion- which told readers the story of Carmen's experience being in a toxic and abusive long-term partnership. She tells this memoir in second-person POV, saying "you" but describing herself and what she did and felt during these experiences. No review can properly express how much this memoir packs a punch, and shines a light on domestic abuse within lesbian relationships. Carmen notes that this isn't meant to be harmful representation of what a lesbian relationship is, but is simply to shine a light on the domestic abuse that also happens in queer relationships, not just heterosexual ones.
Carmen provides references of books and articles on this topic at the end of the book, and I can only imagine how painful recounting all of this, and publishing this must have been for Carmen, so I'm grateful to her for sharing this with us. The chapters are all named "Dream House as ____," which work really well, and some of the chapters are one page long! It's short but may take some time for readers to digest, as it does contain such heavy content. Take care while reading, but I will absolutely be reading more from Carmen in the future!
I highlighted SO much in this book, but here are some quotations that stood out to me:
I enjoy most books for what they are, & I extract lessons from them all. Everyone’s reading experiences are subjective, so I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not, regardless if I add stars or not.
Find me on Instagram: @bookish.millennial or tiktok: @bookishmillennial
This was a powerful memoir full of vignettes -mostly in a linear fashion- which told readers the story of Carmen's experience being in a toxic and abusive long-term partnership. She tells this memoir in second-person POV, saying "you" but describing herself and what she did and felt during these experiences. No review can properly express how much this memoir packs a punch, and shines a light on domestic abuse within lesbian relationships. Carmen notes that this isn't meant to be harmful representation of what a lesbian relationship is, but is simply to shine a light on the domestic abuse that also happens in queer relationships, not just heterosexual ones.
Carmen provides references of books and articles on this topic at the end of the book, and I can only imagine how painful recounting all of this, and publishing this must have been for Carmen, so I'm grateful to her for sharing this with us. The chapters are all named "Dream House as ____," which work really well, and some of the chapters are one page long! It's short but may take some time for readers to digest, as it does contain such heavy content. Take care while reading, but I will absolutely be reading more from Carmen in the future!
I highlighted SO much in this book, but here are some quotations that stood out to me:
Putting language to something for which you have no language is no easy feat.
“Why do we teach girls that their perspectives are inherently untrustworthy?” I would yell. I want to reclaim these words—after all, melodrama comes from melos, which means “music,” “honey”; a drama queen is, nonetheless, a queen—but they are still hot to the touch.
But house idioms and their variants, in fact, often signify the opposite of safety and security. If something is a house of cards it is precarious, easily disrupted. If the writing is on the wall we can see the end of something long before it arrives. If we do not throw stones in glass houses, it is because the house is constructed of hypocrisy, readily shattered. All expressions of weakness, of the inevitability of failure.
Your scary aunt said, apropos of nothing, “I don’t believe in gay people,” and from the back seat—empowered by adulthood—you said, “Well, we believe in you.”
You wish you could accurately describe the bone-deep ache of walking on that campus, the too-late realization that you’d fucked up your whole life by not having sufficient ambition. Who are you? You are nobody. You are nothing.
I had figured out exactly nothing. I came of age, then, in the Dream House, wisdom practically smothering me in my sleep. Everything tasted like an almost epiphany.
You wanted that drive-across-four-states desire. You wanted someone to be obsessed with you. How could you accomplish that?
How do we direct our record keeping toward justice?
We deserve to have our wrongdoing represented as much as our heroism, because when we refuse wrongdoing as a possibility for a group of people, we refuse their humanity. That is to say, queers—real-life ones—do not deserve representation, protection, and rights because they are morally pure or upright as a people. They deserve those things because they are human beings, and that is enough.
Most types of domestic abuse are completely legal.
In one trip, she can listen to 75 percent of an audiobook. If she is driving at sixty-five miles per hour, and the average length of an audiobook is ten hours, how many months will it take for her to realize she has wasted half of her MFA program driving to her girlfriend’s house to be yelled at for five days? How many months will it take her to come to terms with the fact that she functionally did this to herself?
“My queen,” the letter said, “your words are very pretty. And yet they cannot obscure the simple fact that I have seen your zoo.”
What is the value of proof? What does it mean for something to be true? If a tree falls in the woods and pins a wood thrush to the earth, and she shrieks and shrieks but no one hears her, did she make a sound? Did she suffer? Who’s to say?
Dream House as Proof:
So many cells in my body have died and regenerated since the days of the Dream House. My blood and taste buds and skin have long since re-created themselves. My fat still remembers, but just barely—within a few years, it will have turned itself over completely. My bones too. But my nervous system remembers.
In trying to get people to see your humanity, you reveal just that: your humanity. Your fundamentally problematic nature. All the unique and terrible ways in which people can, and do, fail. But people have trouble with this concept.
You will wish for it anyway. Clarity is an intoxicating drug, and you spent 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 this world.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Alcohol, Emotional abuse, Violence, Cursing, Homophobia, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting
17kmcollins's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Sexual assault
Minor: Homophobia and Lesbophobia
harrimyers's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
i am absolutely overcome with emotion. i cant say i’ve read many memoirs but this was maybe one of the most imaginative, deeply feeling and evocative approaches to a memoir i’ve ever come across. every piece of description and dialogue was so heart-wrenchingly personal and impactful. the academic tone that underlined some of the chapters mixed with machados introspection and detail of her own experiences was a beautiful, haunting, and sensitive choice. the tone remained strong all the way through and the choice to advocate throughout this book was done very well. the metaphors, literary choices, and overall approach were just fantastic. the sources she used, the media that she critiqued and used to tell her own story along side of it were beautifully picked and j now have a list of essays, movies, and topics to go through. the choice to format each chapter in short vignettes centred around one theme, motif or technique was brilliant and i especially loved the use of footnotes to the folklore motif reference book, as reading them following the passage only heightened the point she was trying to make. some of these footnotes were so powerful, even if the reference was only 2 words. one that stood out to me was when she was describing her inability to masturbate, and she likened it to the motif of ‘losing magic power’, alongside the themes of sexual relation and her own acknowledged high sex drive and the power she personally got from sex, was a really insightful choice.
the last two lines of thr acknowledgement. were beautiful. and i’m so grateful to have read this book
the last two lines of thr acknowledgement. were beautiful. and i’m so grateful to have read this book
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gaslighting, Lesbophobia, Sexual assault, Homophobia, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Emotional abuse, Domestic abuse, and Toxic relationship
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
clichemarker's review against another edition
dark
emotional
inspiring
fast-paced
5.0
"Powerful and important readHow many times had you said, “If I just looked a little
different, I’d be drowning in love”?"
"It is, in fact, freeing: the
idea that queer does not equal good or pure or right. It is simply a
state of being"
"Your scary aunt said,
apropos of nothing, “I don’t believe in gay people,” and from the
back seat—empowered by adulthood—you said, “Well, we believe
in you.”
"You mention it once, but then she does that thing where she
repeats what you’ve said a few times, each time getting a little more
sarcastic until you apologize."
"It is more surprising
when there is no evidence of a talented man having hurt someone at
all."
"It is, in fact, freeing: the
idea that queer does not equal good or pure or right. It is simply a
state of being"
"Your scary aunt said,
apropos of nothing, “I don’t believe in gay people,” and from the
back seat—empowered by adulthood—you said, “Well, we believe
in you.”
"You mention it once, but then she does that thing where she
repeats what you’ve said a few times, each time getting a little more
sarcastic until you apologize."
"It is more surprising
when there is no evidence of a talented man having hurt someone at
all."
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse
Moderate: Homophobia
aquakirst's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Lesbophobia, Bullying, Mental illness, Murder, Biphobia, Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, and Homophobia
jujuwithbooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Body shaming, Fatphobia, Lesbophobia, Gaslighting, and Toxic relationship
ffreyarrose's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gaslighting, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Domestic abuse, and Emotional abuse
tinyjude's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.25
A memoir filled with beautiful metaphors, analogies and cross-boundaries genres and experimentation. Despite being a brief read, the contents of the book makes it harder to consume it in one sitting. The book mainly deals and details an abusive relationship between two queer women, how it starts, develops, how it destroys her but is unable to bolt, and the long-lasting effects of trauma due to said abuse. It is horrifying but highly important as, stated by the author in the book, there aren't many sources that discuss this topic and show light in how, no matter which type of relationship you are (poly, monogamous, same-sex, opposite-sex, etc), abuse is abuse and can happen and has happened. I am glad we are at a time in which we can discuss these topics among the community.
The gaslighting, the jealousy, controlling behaviour, abusive patterns, "happy" moments to overcompensate, the physicial, emotional and sexual harrassment, the consequences... they are all difficult themes to tackle and read, but Carmen María Machado does a marvelous job.
My only complaint is that i'm not the biggest fan of the second person pov in books. Nonetheless, a harrowing, necessary read!
The gaslighting, the jealousy, controlling behaviour, abusive patterns, "happy" moments to overcompensate, the physicial, emotional and sexual harrassment, the consequences... they are all difficult themes to tackle and read, but Carmen María Machado does a marvelous job.
My only complaint is that i'm not the biggest fan of the second person pov in books. Nonetheless, a harrowing, necessary read!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gaslighting, Physical abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual harassment, Body shaming, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Violence, Biphobia, Homophobia, Toxic relationship, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Sexual assault, and Suicidal thoughts