A review by thebigemmt505
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

“Clarity is an intoxicating drug, and you spend 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 the world.”

In The Dream House is a memoir from the author Carmen Maria Machado that details her experience with an abusive, queer relationship. It uses narrative tropes to explore the complex perspectives and emotions from this time in her life, with each chapter introducing a new trope. 

In The Dream House is incredibly written. Not only does it show an impressive knowledge of literature and queer history, but the knowledge is used not in a pretentious way, but instead is used to deeply and profoundly explore the many complicated feelings around an abusive relationship. Many sentences are beautifully sad and achingly relatable, while others are darkly funny. The order of the story and the choice to often interrupt the narrative is unique and genuine, as if we follow Machado’s exact lines of thinking. The pacing is relatively well done, and the recounting flows smoothly. 

The trope structure does get a bit stale after awhile. The chapters are short, and because each chapter is short, the punches feel a bit less punchy in the later chapters. Granted, there’s only so much “punch” to be expected from an autobiographical story, so it’s not a massive criticism. There are also moments of repetition that feel a bit unnecessary. The ending is a bit messy, though it was probably intentional (and my bias shows given I’m a “clear beginning clear ending” person.) 

On a personal note, my own traumatic history fortunately lacks an abusive relationship, despite my many brushes with horrible people and traumatizing events. Even despite this, the book offered so much solace in its depiction of queer interpersonal conflict and abuse. It’s true that the queer community is more hesitant to expose its humanity to the world, dark and disgusting and horrific as it can be (like all of humanity ever), and having had my share of not-so-great gay community experiences myself it’s nice to see it explored in this book. In addition, so much of the talk on trauma is raw and real and too familiar. The pain of and shame and self-blame are all such familiar feelings. It’s heartbreaking to read and to know we’re not all alone. 

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

It’s an emptiness that I hope will be filled by more books like this one. 
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