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A review by murrderdith
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
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**
**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**
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Body shaming, Infidelity, Lesbophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Toxic relationship, Biphobia, Gaslighting, and Physical abuse
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.