‘The Dream House’ is, ostensibly, the couple’s Midwestern home. Machado’s abusive ex never gets a name she’s known only as ‘The woman in the Dream House.’ The house straddles reality and metaphor, sometimes uneasily.
In the Dream House balances grief and fear, with an undertone of gratitude and relief at the opportunity for Machado voice her story. Yet Machado deftly disassembles domestic abuse narratives in same-sex couples, drawing upon her own traumatic experiences with an abusive ex-girlfriend, with a sleight of hand familiar to those who enjoyed her previous collection, Her Body and Other Parties (2017). Three hundred or so pages packed with emotional manipulation and physical terror is, unsurprisingly, a challenge for readers.
Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House is noteworthy for many reasons, but for this most of all: Machado will keep you reading when you most want to turn away. It’s not that readers do not care for the subject in fact, caring is what makes it hard. People, generally speaking, do not want to read a memoir on abuse. In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado, Graywolf Press, 2019, pp.304, £14.99 (hardback)
0 kommentar(er)
