IN THE DREAM HOUSE

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: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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!

Not original. Text is wrongly aligned

Not the regular kind of novel. Though im open to mew styles of writing but i think the content was not gud or compelling. I was not able to visualise the abuse. Cud not connect with the writer and her pain. U cud give it a pass. I chose this as it has high rating on goodreads

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.

llegó rápido y en perfectas condiciones!! muy buen libro

I have so many pages in this book dog-eared, I’ve had to use the top and bottom corners of some pages to mark both sides. And I’m not usually one to dog-ear books.“In the Dream House” happened to be released just around the time my queer relationship was becoming egregiously verbally and emotionally abusive for the first (and, while prolonged, still thankfully last) time.Reading Carmen Maria Machado’s experiences of abuse in a queer relationship was one of the things that helped me believe my own perceptions about what was happening to me, despite being gaslighted, and despite desperately wanting to believe the woman I’d loved couldn’t possibly be abusing me; that I couldn’t possibly be allowing her to stay in my life while she abused me. Lies my ex-partner had a vested interest in buying into and reinforcing.Without “In the Dream House” to contrast my experiences against and parallel them with, I would have had an even harder time believing and validating to myself that, yes, she was abusing me.Without “In the Dream House”, it would have taken me even longer to leave.Thank you, Carmen Maria Machado, for writing so painfully beautifully and so honestly about your own experiences of abuse and choosing to share them to help other queer intimate abuse survivors.I did need this book. I don’t have the words to say how grateful I am for it. Thank you.

Um dos melhores livros escritos na humanidade.

On telling a colleague that I'd loved Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, he recommended that I read this book. It's a tough read in places, due to the subject matter, but the story is told in such a creative way that it holds your attention even through its most challenging moments. A powerful and important book that will no doubt stay with me for quite some time.

Ça faisait longtemps qu’un livre ne me fasse ressentir autant d’émotions. Écrit dans un format très original, vous allez déborder ce livre en une journée. Carmen Maria Machado est sans doute l’une des meilleures écrivaines contemporaines. Je vous recommande à 100% !