IN THE DREAM HOUSE Paperback – 1 October 2020

Nice

This book has some very nice chapters, I did find myself highlighting it a lot. But overall, I dont think the experimental narrative format worked for me, especially the movie interpretation stuff - which made the whole thing feel disjointed for me. I think it was incredible that the author manages to convey how toxic her relationship was without getting emotional with the prose. I'm still glad I read it, but thats all I've got to say.OH, the chapter on queer villains was *CHEFS KISS*! I highlighted the entire thing!

I finished In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado a few days back and I am still at a loss on how to articulate everything I felt while listening to it.When I started this book I only knew it was a memoir but the raw honesty and the wild creativity Machado uses in telling her story, in creating an archive for abusive queer relationships makes this unlike any memoir I have read so far.The way Machado narrates her experience of being in an abusive same sex relationship, through small snippets, using a variety of literary tropes is nothing short of revolutionary. It leads the readers to view her experiences through myriad frames, each one offering fresh insights and revelations. Interspersing it with pop culture analysis and folktales, drawing parallels from them to her own account makes reading this book doubly enriching.Machado’s use of first person and second person narration, where ‘I’ denotes her present self, in a stable safe environment and ‘you’ denotes her past self, succeeds in creating a tangible emotional connection. The transition of her relationship from tentative hope and wonder to tenderness and love to doubts and self recriminations and finally to dawning realisation and horror is recounted so masterfully that it feels like you are experiencing it all right alongside her. I am at a loss to describe all the ways this book made me feel!While the audiobook was amazing, I still feel like I need to touch the book and see the words on paper, to mark and annotate to fully take in the genius of this memoir. I highly highly recommend this book!!Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Not original. Text is wrongly aligned

This is one of those pathetic books where the author feels she is feeling too much and she is describing it in a verve of poetry. She talks to you in first person and recalls what has happened to her. First of all, the only interesting thing in the book is the person the lover who has wronged her. That person barely makes it to 50 of the 250-270 of her books pages. Through the medium of this book she is trying to recall what happened to her when she dated the woman. However she eventually makes it about abuse among people who are queer. I found this lame, unforgivable and ultimately a waste of my time. I have read many better books. I am not a homophobe but this book is simply wasteful and quite lame.

I found the the first few chapters (and their naming) extremely pretentious, but it gets better as you progress. Though the book deals with a serious topic (abuse) the author finds and highlights humour in the most unexpected places. The chapter 'Dream House as word problem' had me howling. I also liked the footnotes comparing significant events in her life to plot devices and motifs in fairy tales.