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

emotional reflective

5.0

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

This book excels in terms of writing style and quality. In The Dream House is a memoir written in fragmented form. You never get the story as a whole but a sequence of short chapters with memories narrated in them. It’s nothing like anything I’ve ever read before. Some chapters are as short as one sentence, others are pages long, and others are almost like poems. 

Machado expresses her experiences in an abusive same-sex relationship through lyrical writing, addressing a rarely discussed subject. She also touches on the societal expectations for what a queer relationship should look like. 

It's not just the exceptional reading experience; it's the delivery. She writes in the second person, which is a difficult thing to do successfully (the other person I’ve read who triumphantly does it is Shehan Karunatilaka in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida).

It’s an intimate story of her life and her relationship with her former partner made in an authentic, creative, and beautiful way.