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A review by blurstoftimes
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
5.0
From the very beginning, Machado vows not to mince her words. This is a story about an abusive queer relationship, but it is also about many other things; just a few of them: Star Trek, process art pieces, the fragility of time, and the chaos of liminal human romance within the intersection of caustic psychological actions and hope for a future that is DOA. She brilliantly relates her experiences to other queer women in a way that is not only insightful but groundbreaking for a creative nonfiction work this truthful and ambitious.
Machado is a wonderfully intelligent and charismatic writer; her bouts of brilliance never cease. Whether it is taking apart queer history to underline society’s misconceptions about abuse or simply creating a nonlinear timeline about her terrifying experiences, she does so with a surprising amount of light-footed poignancy: perfectly weighted but never ceasing to startle you. Machado states early on that ‘The Dream House’ is real, but also that it is not real. The rest of the book is a detailed collection of mini essays that are dotted with this analysis, and which are determined to deduce exactly what she means by presenting this contradiction.
Yet, as readers will discover after reading further, Machado’s exposition of her past trauma, post-relief, and obsessive research into the culture that empowers her just as much as it cornered her only goes as far as she wants it to; she is completely under control over what she says. This is why she succeeds at including—to the immediate surprise, as well as childish excitement from this writer—a Choose Your Own Adventure section: a fun, but ultimately harrowing affair that puts us directly into the shoes of her harrowing experience.
Machado deconstructs various tropes in storytelling and magnifies the hypocrisy underneath our lens of queer women as characters, perceived villains, and citizens who are seen as outliers in a society that inherently works against them. It’s a discourse that comes from years of deepening analysis and maximal introspection, but ultimately Machado realizes that one day she will die and the memory of her abuse will die with her body and her soul. Though she has long escaped it and found herself in a happy marriage, ‘The House’ still exists and will rebuild itself in the lives of future victims: firm but full of ghosts of queerness and acid.
Machado is a wonderfully intelligent and charismatic writer; her bouts of brilliance never cease. Whether it is taking apart queer history to underline society’s misconceptions about abuse or simply creating a nonlinear timeline about her terrifying experiences, she does so with a surprising amount of light-footed poignancy: perfectly weighted but never ceasing to startle you. Machado states early on that ‘The Dream House’ is real, but also that it is not real. The rest of the book is a detailed collection of mini essays that are dotted with this analysis, and which are determined to deduce exactly what she means by presenting this contradiction.
Yet, as readers will discover after reading further, Machado’s exposition of her past trauma, post-relief, and obsessive research into the culture that empowers her just as much as it cornered her only goes as far as she wants it to; she is completely under control over what she says. This is why she succeeds at including—to the immediate surprise, as well as childish excitement from this writer—a Choose Your Own Adventure section: a fun, but ultimately harrowing affair that puts us directly into the shoes of her harrowing experience.
Machado deconstructs various tropes in storytelling and magnifies the hypocrisy underneath our lens of queer women as characters, perceived villains, and citizens who are seen as outliers in a society that inherently works against them. It’s a discourse that comes from years of deepening analysis and maximal introspection, but ultimately Machado realizes that one day she will die and the memory of her abuse will die with her body and her soul. Though she has long escaped it and found herself in a happy marriage, ‘The House’ still exists and will rebuild itself in the lives of future victims: firm but full of ghosts of queerness and acid.