'Ravishingly beautiful' Observer
'Excruciatingly honest and yet vibrantly creative' Irish Times
'Provocative and rich' Economist
'Daring, chilling, and unlike anything else you've ever read' Esquire
'An absolute must-read for 2020' Stylist
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse.
Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and examines them from distinct angles. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction, infusing all with her characteristic wit, playfulness and openness to enquiry. The result is a powerful book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.
Staff Choice: Sol
I read this book in one day, it got me totally hooked.
Machado tells her experience being in a queer abusive relationship. A painful story that Machado tells with a beautiful language, witty references and short-easy-to-read chapters.
One quote that I loved and found eye opening was:
“We deserve to have our wrongdoing represented as much as our heroism, because when we refuse wrongdoing as a possibility for a group of people, we refuse their humanity.”
Staff Choice: Ailish
In the Dream House is a memoir, but it's also about queer history, fairy tales, and archival silence. Machado describes her relationship with a charismatic but ultimately abusive woman, and infuses it with references to legal proceedings, archival traces, and Disney villains. The book is basically an attempt to write herself into history, to make sure that stories like hers are added to the canon. I'd never read anything like it before, both in terms of format and subject matter, and it really blew my mind.
