In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

On top of that, I must explain to everyone why I ended it, because to the rest of the world, my partner was perfect. I never once told anyone what was going on in my home, and now the shame I feel at having put up with such dysfunction for so long can be overwhelming. I finally got the courage to end it three years ago, but I continue to work through the after effects. You see, I too was involved with an emotionally and psychologically abusive female partner for close to three decades. First I’ll say that memoirs are not a favorite genre of mine, but the subject matter of this made me overlook that. I am not really sure where to start with this one. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. Machado's dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry.

She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.

Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.Īnd it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope - the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman - through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado