By week ten of term, energy is low. The prospect of reading another book when the deadlines are piling up and the fridge is growing empty is almost too much to ask.
Enter In the Dream House. Carmen Machado’s memoir is spellbinding from first to last page. I read it within 24 hours, a late semester record. Like me, you may be hesitating over the word memoir and contemplating whether to continue reading. You should.
In The Dream House explores the relationship between two women. It follows their first sexually charged encounter, all the sweetness that blossoms from it, and finally, its painful, dragged-out end.
Machado weaves her feelings from the past with her reflections from the present. The result is a fluid process of self-realisation: her relationship was abusive. The way Machado presents this realisation is what is striking. The story is told through chapters, some are several pages long and others are a single sentence, and each one begins ‘Dream House as …’
The ironically termed ‘Dream house’ refers to the physical house Machado shared with her partner. But the term becomes a metonymy for their relationship: ‘Dream House as Utopia’, ‘Dream House as Bildungsroman’ and ‘Dream House as Cycle’ come to act as different narrative lenses through which Machado and the reader can examine the relationship. Though a intimate memoir, Machado’s method of reflection feels universal. Her unique style invites the reader to experiment themselves and view their own lives through this lens of ‘literary genre’. This can be an enlightening and comforting way of understanding oneself.
Machado’s memoir further exceeds expectations by cracking open the experience of domestic abuse and bringing the reader in. She manages this by using the second person ‘you’ when referring to her past self. This has several effects. For Machado it draws a line between who she was and who she is, allowing her to narrate her experience without having to identify with it. This deft use of grammar also communicates a feeling of helplessness. We may not identify with ‘I’ but we can with ‘you.’ We read the memoir as though it’s addressed to us and really begin to imagine ourselves into Machado’s experience.
Aside from her ability to make the personal universal and readable, I love Machado’s work because it is refreshing. In rewriting the memoir form Machado has created a new genre, blending fiction and reality and presenting it in a fragmented, multi-genre fashion. She has created a new and distinct feminine space within the literary world. It’s depressing when female actresses are crammed into the kind of man shaped hole that is Doctor Who or James Bond. Even if they play the role perfectly, they’re still not playing it as a man and are often badly received. More thrilling than tokenism is the recognition of new and existing female voices. Machado is one such voice.
[Pearl Kelly, she/her]
[Instagram: @pearl_.kelly__]
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