Reviews with content warning for Cursing - In the Dream House

Reviews tagging 'Cursing'

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

152 reviews

livyadri's review against another edition

4.5

This felt very close to me.

It was good to be opened to the reality of domestic abuse in queer relationships and to the history that some have tried to erase that documents the realities so many have experienced without belief or support from society at large.

Machado is skilled and raw.

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ashely_56's review

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

This books was as lyrical as it was heart wrenching. This memoir is a very raw and personality story of one woman experiences in an abusive. Yet it's not the stereotypical domestic abuse as her abuser was her girlfriend.

This book dives deeping in the nuances of their relationship and explain how queer must have the space to be nuances and un heroic. This story of abuse within queer love, demonstrates just how deeply human these relationship are and how woman are just as likely to be abusers as men.

Carmen is an incredible writer her prose entranced and pulled me deep into her mind. I highly recommend the audio as it is recorded by the author herself.

Like poetry this is a story that demands me be heard out loud as well as read.

She explores with us throughout the story the pain of loving someone who harms you, and even emphasizing and pitying her abuser.

As she knows that she was not born this way but rather made into an abuser by her painful upbringing.

This book holds your attention from the prologue to the epilogue.

For anyone who as every been harms by those who were meant to make you feel safe. This is the book for you!

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tales_told_in_gold's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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maxgdy's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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brookey8888's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective fast-paced

4.0

This was really good, but heartbreaking. I appreciate that she wrote about her abusive experience in a queer relationship. We need more stories like that. The writing took me a while to get into, but this was beautifully written.

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mary_wyrd's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

In the Dream House you are a prisoner to your own heart; trapped, wanting to leave. But you can't, because the house is part of you now, a house that haunts. A dream that became a nightmare. This memoir is part exorcism part rebellion and a full-throated yell against the tyranny of abuse. Machado's full range of creativity is used in excising this chapter of her life and analysing its impact. The format is inventive. Each section is told in a different genre style or trope. Each section is also short, like a glimpse through the windows of the Dream House, seeing a tense, intense relationship from various angles, before the curtains are drawn. Many chapters are told in second person present tense, placing you in the author's position, living through that relationship. You are both victim and witness. You are Machado. You are all the women in this position who couldn't get out until they did - fatally or finally free. This is a personal study of abuse with reflections on how society has historically treated both lesbians in love and lesbians in abusive situations; with silence, disgust and distrust. In the Dream House as personal journey is certain to join the canon of lesbian non-fiction exploring love and loathing within a lesbian context. In the Dream House as memoir already plays a part in unravelling the lie that women can't abuse other women. They can, and those abused need to be believed.

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