In the Dream House: A Memoir

wow, this book.

this is devastating and gorgeous and i feel badly for loving something this much when it is so full of pain and hurt. (but also exquisite writing and depth of thought and honesty and history and folklore.)

and footnotes! (i mean, i really love footnotes, but these are amazing.)

i need to think more about what she does here: what her few researched sections on queer history do for the narrative that her own story doesn't; how she writes in different styles and innovatively (that choose your own adventure section!); and most importantly when she uses the first person (sprinkled in) versus second person (most of the time). i might not have the exact answers to all of these questions, but i do know that this is absolutely show more brilliant and necessary and so well written/done. (edit to add some thoughts: it's like she's showing us little snippets of the relationship to get at the truth of what it was like for her. it's also how memory works, showing pieces at a time or events in flashes. each little chapter is a little insight into her life when she was with the woman in the dream house, and each showed her a little something different about that woman, and so we are given a new voice or a new way of telling or a surprising turn. the change between first and second person pulls us in and pushes us away, something the woman in the dream house did to carmen over and over again, keeping her from feeling sure and comfortable with where she was, who she was, in that relationship.)

"'Don't you ever fucking write about this. Do you fucking understand me?'

You don't know if she means the woman or her, but you nod.

Fear makes liars of us all."

"...and also you're afraid you're going to miss your flight because your girlfriend spent her time this morning putting on her face, an expression you've always found sort of funny and vaguely sexist but that now just strikes you as horrifyingly ominous, because it suggests that she has one face and needs to put on another, and you saw underneath it last night, when you were so afraid and cowering, and she was screaming, and you were hiding from her, hiding from the woman who once told you she loved you and wanted to have children with you and called you the most beautiful and sexy and brilliant woman she'd ever met, you had to hide from her in a bathroom with a lock on the door, and if your family found out they'd probably think it proved every idea they've ever had about lesbians, and you wish she was a man because then at least it could reinforce ideas people had about men, and how she probably wouldn't understand but the last thing queer women need is bad fucking PR..."

"Putting language to something for which you have no language is no easy feat."

"From the corner of my eye, I stared at her freckles and imagined kissing her mouth. When I thought about her, I squirmed, tormented. What did it mean?

I had a crush on her. That's it. It wasn't complicated. But I didn't realize I had a crush on her. Because it was the early 2000s and I was just a baby in the suburbs without a reliable internet connection. I didn't know any queers. I did not understand myself. I didn't know what it meant to want to kiss another woman.

Years later, I'd figured that part out. But then, I didn't know what it meant to be afraid of another woman.

Do you see now? Do you understand?"

to refer back to when reading her book of short stories:
"You will spend the next few years of your writing career coming up with elaborate justifications for the structure of the stories you were writing at the time...
You can't bring yourself to say what you really think: I broke the stories down because I was breaking down and didn't know what else to do."

a quote from sarah manguso: "The trouble with letting people see you at your worst isn't that they'll remember, it's that you'll remember." show less

“Love cannot be won or lost; a relationship doesn't have a scoring system. We are partners, paired against the world. We cannot succeed if we are at odds with each other.”

“The truth is, there is no better place to live than in the shadow of a beautiful, furious mountain.”

“You cried in front of many people. You missed readings, parties, the supermoon. You tried to tell your story to people who didn’t know how to listen. You made a fool of yourself, in more ways than one.

“When the historian of queer experience attempts to document a queer past, there is often a gatekeeper, representing a straight present.”

For many years, Carmen Maria Machado was locked into an abusive same-sex relationship. A nightmare, she had a hard show more time pulling herself out of. In her debut memoir Machado, describes this experience, in exquisite and painful detail. It can be a difficult read at times, but her writing is so bold and gorgeous, it guides the reader safely past the ugly passages. I loved her story collection, Her Body and Other Parties and with this one, she has proved to be a voice to be heard. I can't wait to see what she does next. show less

When Carmen Maria Machado was getting her MFA at Iowa City, she was also involved in an abusive relationship that she writes about here. The conceit is that every chapter -- ranging in length from a single paragraph to several pages -- is set in a specific genre or trope, so one chapter is "The Dream House as Unreliable Narrator" and another is "The Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure." It's an effective way of pulling together a narrative that isn't too difficult to read, given the subject matter. Machado has researched ideas and themes that appear in fairy tales and folk tales and pulled them in to illustrate the ways in which the abuse manifested and in her response. Machado is also looking at the history of domestic abuse among show more women and how that differs from and imitates the more familiar partner violence in heterosexual relationships.

This could be a heavy book and a sad one, but Machado is so brilliant and her mind is so active and eager to seek out connections and ideas that I had to consciously slow down my reading. And Machado's story doesn't remain one characterized by uncertainty and turmoil. show less

Machado has written an incredibly powerful book that does three amazing things all at once: It makes the nebulous but horrific experience of emotional abuse feel palpably real. It exposes the hidden world of women abusing women in lesbian relationships and examines without flinching all the uncomfortable questions that raises. And it does something completely new with the memoir form. If it had achieved any of these three, it would be worth reading, but that it can do all of them is an extraordinary achievement.

As a graduate student, author Carmen Maria Machado got involved with a beautiful, sexy, but also cruel and demeaning woman. This relationship affected Machado deeply, in many ways. In this brilliant memoir, Machado lifts the veil of secrecy that makes abusive queer relationships a taboo topic, even within lesbian and gay circles. I loved her use of folklore indices to reference the various motifs of her personal story. Highly recommended to all memoir readers.

This is a creatively written memoir about the author’s experience in an emotionally abusive same-sex relationship. Each short chapter is written as if viewing the relationship through a particular literary lens, such as picaresque, time travel, cult classic, romance, bildungsroman, erotica, noir, high fantasy, spy thriller, horror, etc. It traces the trajectory of an abusive relationship, from the initial infatuation with a charismatic individual to the euphoric feelings of the first stage of the relationship (the Dream House) to the inevitable slide into lying, gaslighting, manipulation, and controlling behavior.

For me, it is no surprise that same-sex relationships can contain the same types of abuse experienced by heterosexual show more couples, but the author points out that it is even more difficult to bring these issues into the light due to the already prevalent prejudices against the LGBT community. Machado brings up other instances of how abuse is generally viewed in society, as told in our stories – myths, fairy tales, films, television shows, and other media. Women are generally not viewed as capable of inflicting abuse, but when it is about power and control, anyone can be an abuser.

This book provides almost a handbook of red flags. The victim of abuse often tries to excuse or rationalize the partner’s behavior and keeps returning based on promises or apologies, hoping to get back that feeling of euphoria from the first stage. The victim is walking on eggshells and is the recipient of hot and cold treatment. The abuse accelerates over time. I think this book delivers an important message. Emotional and psychological abuse can be insidious, and it is important to recognize it and protect oneself by cutting off all contact. I also really loved this innovative approach to writing a memoir. Anyone who has experienced (or is experiencing) an abusive relationship will be able to relate to this book, though it may trigger painful memories. For others, it will be enlightening and educational. show less

This is a fragmented memoir about being in an abusive relationship. As such, it's sometimes a tough read (the abuse is mostly emotional/psychological, but occasionally physical). And yet it's the sort of book I want to go around recommending to people. It reminded me a little of Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation, a novel about divorce told in a similarly fragmentary manner. I think that works for these two stories because the structure creates a sense of 'how did I end up here', so far from what the narrators were expecting at the start of the relationship.

In the Dream House gives us a series of short images and episodes from the relationship - from the first excitement of lust and love, through the loved one's increasingly show more unpredictable behaviour, to terrible scenes of rage and jealousy.

You will remember so little about the dinner except that, at the end of it, you want to prolong the evening and so you order tea of all things. You drink it—a mouthful of heat and herb, scorching the roof of your mouth—while trying not to stare at her, trying to be charming and nonchalant while desire gathers in your limbs. Your female crushes were always floating past you, out of reach, but she touches your arm and looks directly at you and you feel like a child buying something with her own money for the first time.

And later:

The next day, after you say good-bye to your friends, you sit in the car in the parking lot as she talks at you—your friends hate me, they’re jealous. An hour later you are still there, your head bent tearily against the window. The new bride walks by and notices you in your car. You see her slow down, her face crimped with puzzlement and concern. You shake your head ever so slightly, and she looks uncertain but mercifully she keeps walking so you can endure your punishment in peace. By the time you’ve wound out of the mountains and gotten back to a freeway, the bite of the fight has sweetened; whiskey unraveled by ice.

Some of the episodes are told in stylistically clever ways, which could have seemed gimmicky except that there is always a reason for it which takes you back to what Machado is saying, and which makes sense emotionally. A short chapter which is a 'lipogram' (without the letter 'e') makes a point about what it's like when there is something huge that you can't talk to anyone about. A chapter in the form of a 'choose your own adventure story' conveys the sense that no matter what Machado did, it wasn't right, and there was no way to break out of the cycle of fights and anger. show less