Dear Carmen Maria Machado,
Thank you for writing, In The Dream House. I was first introduced to your writing, like so many others, through the collection of short stories: Her Body and Other Parties. I fell in love with your ability to use folklore and speculative tropes within the larger literary conversations of gender, sexuality, genre, and violence. So, when I opened up, In The Dream House, a memoir chronicling an abusive lesbian relationship during your MFA, I wasn’t sure what I would find. What I found was an exhilarating read, a tour de force of structural originality second only to the unflinching honesty in the face of abuse, further deepening your already indelible imprint on modern story telling. To me, your first book challenged the literary illegitimacy of genre tropes, while In The Dream House redefines what a memoir can do.
The memoir describes the story of a talented graduate student still inexperienced with her sexuality who meets “the woman in the dream house.” The woman in the dreamhouse refers to an emotional and physically abusive lover. The dreamhouse is the relationship in which both of them dwelt. The name itself calls to mind the fragility between dream and nightmare. Reality and delusion. Sanity and insanity. The dreamhouse becomes an uncanny funhouse we wonder into, unsure of the reality to our own situation.
Through their relationship, we see the woman in the dream house become gradually more controlling, and begin to forget the verbal abuse she inflicts on the narrator. For instance in “Dreamhouse as Chekhov’s Trigger,” the woman in the dreamhouse gets drunk and says, “‘Leave this house or I’ll make you leave.’” Then, only moments later says, “‘Why are you crying?” she asks in a voice so sweet your heart splits open like a peach.’” Interspersed around the major narratives are sections of commentary about domestic abuse. For instance in “Dream House as Epiphany,” you write, “Most types of domestic abuse are completely legal.”
As we progress through the relationship, the abuser becomes more unhinged and the reader is shown the impact of verbal abuse more poignantly. For example, in “Dream House as Déjà Vu, you write, “She says she loves you, sometimes. She sees your qualities, and you should be ashamed of them… Sometimes when you catch her looking at you, you feel like she’s determining the best way to take you apart.” In this lies the true brilliance of your writing. The darkness of the subject matter is often understated, so divested of all melodrama that one can’t help but feel the vulnerability of the character in the memoir, or the strength of the writer that character grew to be. Another example is in “Dream House as Void,” in which, after the woman in the dream house and the narrator have broken up, you write of the space left in an abuser’s absence, “It’s hard to describe the space that yawns in your life after she is gone… You wonder if you will ever be able to let someone touch you; if you will ever be able to reconnect your brain and body or if it will forever sit on opposite sides of this new and terrible ravine.” This memoir is often at its most powerful when the abuser is being drawn, specifically because the abuser is a monster, but not the kind that lives under your bed or in your closet. The kind of monster who breathes and lives and feels and has admirable qualities. The most terrifying kind of monster, because it’s a real one.
The memoir is organized episodically in which each episode is written using the genre of the title. For instance, “Dream House as Utopia,” “Dream House as High Fantasy,” “Dream House as Inventory,” “Dream House as Chekhov’s Gun,” etc. Each episode proclaims from the title the form that the section will take place. This allows the story to be told from every conceivable angle. This brings the world of classical story telling together with modern stories to tell one cohesive story.
The footnotes point out the archetypal nature of folklore, arguing for the integral importance of folklore motifs on the human psyche. For instance, in “Dream House as Diagnosis” the line “You feel sick to your stomach almost constantly; the slightest motion makes you nauseated,” is followed by the footnote denoting the trope of sickness or weakness for breaking taboo in Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. By connecting real life moments to motifs in folklore, you are simultaneously creating a lineage of learned experience and showing the archetypal, physiological significance of the folklore she so clearly loves.
In writing the book review I am only able to scratch the surface of what all this memoir holds. On the very first page, even before the epigraphs, you write, “If you need this book, it is for you.” To that, I can only respond that everyone needs to read this book. It’s that powerful, brilliant, and poignant. It’s that important.
Your fan,
Nick Brown
