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A review by maihindawi
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Shining a light into darkest corners of queer history and the politics, literature and media that conspire to keep those stories stricken from the public record, Carmen Maria Machado tells her own story of survival from an abusive lesbian relationship during her mid-20s.
The short and oscillating chapters of, at times: personal memoir, at others: speculative fiction, film history, and queer theory, each add an essential angle from which to view the complex web of trauma that defined Machado's relationship with the unnamed "woman in the Dream House". Machado's memories are all recounted in second-person (addressed to, and recounted by, "you") which makes the narrative voice powerfully intimate and the plunge into toxicity all the more difficult and horrifying to stomach, as you imagine yourself in all of these contexts, or - more often than not - utterly displaced without any context at all...
It's rare that a book grips me to the point I literally cannot put it down and I must devour it in its entirety on a single day. This book did just that.
The short and oscillating chapters of, at times: personal memoir, at others: speculative fiction, film history, and queer theory, each add an essential angle from which to view the complex web of trauma that defined Machado's relationship with the unnamed "woman in the Dream House". Machado's memories are all recounted in second-person (addressed to, and recounted by, "you") which makes the narrative voice powerfully intimate and the plunge into toxicity all the more difficult and horrifying to stomach, as you imagine yourself in all of these contexts, or - more often than not - utterly displaced without any context at all...
It's rare that a book grips me to the point I literally cannot put it down and I must devour it in its entirety on a single day. This book did just that.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting
Moderate: Sexual harassment
Minor: Sexual assault