Machado writes deftly about the self-consciousness of the queer experience, the anxiety and behavior-policing that come with knowing that people can and will use you as fodder to feed their own biases and perceptions of the world. The memoir also tackles the task of writing about a subject that often goes unnamed and unspoken, especially in best-selling memoirs: abuse in queer relationships. The ending of the Adventure fully confronts you with the reality of the cyclical nature of abuse in one of the most emotionally crushing and effective sections in the book. No matter how careful you are there is no way to “win” the situation or to make it better. The steps the reader chooses to take brings them through Machado’s thought process as she decides how she will deal with the abuse. You have elbowed her in your sleep and must respond to her anger. The scenario begins with you waking up next to Machado’s girlfriend.

This ever-changing form shines the brightest during “Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure,” a walk through a beautiful and harrowing morning in which you, the reader, are forced to respond to the actions of Machado’s unnamed girlfriend. In the Dream House is a powerful, much-needed memoir that makes strong work of its experimental form, simultaneously telling a story that most readers would be unfamiliar with while bringing them in close to Machado’s lived experiences.Īmbitious in both style and content, each “chapter” takes a different form - “Dream House as Noir,” “Dream House as Soap Opera,” “Dream House as Self-Help Bestseller.” These shifts in form are used to taxonomize snippets of Machado’s relationship, framing each in the overarching context of pop culture, literary genre, and queer history. Machado’s frequent use of the second person, addressing her younger, still-in-the-relationship self as “you” contributed greatly to the sense of unease I felt while reading the story. In the Dream House, a memoir about a relationship inadvertently mirroring my own in location and number of girlfriends, though not in violence, challenges my analytical distance. One of my girlfriends, (the small, blonde, butch one), has just bought a house in Bloomington, Indiana. I feel obligated to put a disclaimer before my review: I’m in a polyamorous lesbian relationship.

In the Dream House follows the story of Machado’s own relationship with an emotionally and psychologically abusive woman. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado / Graywolf Press / 264 pages / November 5, 2019

Machado in the dreamhouse