A review by jennygeee
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

emotional reflective tense fast-paced

3.25

I was gripped a lot of the time and really enjoyed the discussion on the violence of the archive. think this was well written and I really liked the format but there were a few major things I didn’t like. There were a good amount of “chapters” that were retellings of other stories (movies, episodes, music videos) and I didn’t love them and also didn’t think they fit very well. If the author were to bring up a movie in passing and I want to watch it I will watch it, I don’t really want to read someone else’s summary of it. I also didn’t love how so many of the “chapters” started with “I wrote part of this book in [insert some cabin in some obscure part of the world]. It felt pretentious and it took me out of her story.  I hesitate to say this because I’m not trying to victim blame or remove any responsibility from the abuser in this situation but another thing that I didn’t love about it was that clearly this was one side of a probably more nuanced situation. The author makes herself out to be a perfect person who can do no wrong. Bad things happen to good people but bad things also happen to people who are human, and I didn’t feel that she was representing herself as a human with faults. All of that said I think this was an important story to tell and I hope it continues to shed a light on abuse outside of a heteronormative context.