A review by books4days
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

4.0

4 stars, but not using Goodreads default of "I liked it," as I found this memoir as disturbing as it intended to be. This book has been described as "genre-bending," in that each chapter (each no more than 4 pages long) is titled "Dream House as ____" with a genre (or kind-of genre) filling in each blank. I decided to read this book after I heard an NPR story about this book, and the part they read on-air was "Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure." This memoir of an abusive same-sex relationship is meant to shed light on this rarely-discussed subject. The author discusses why intimate partner violence in lesbian relationships hasn't been the subject of much discussion, and it was very interesting learning about relevant court cases along with the devolution of the author's relationship with the unnamed woman who lives in the Dream House. This was the first thing I have read by Carmen Maria Machado (I couldn't get into her book of short stories), and it was very powerful -- a train wreck of a relationship I couldn't look away from.