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A review by sarahglen
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
5.0
From the dedication to the afterword, I loved every piece of this book.
Machado's questions have embedded themselves deeper into my brain than I knew foreign thoughts could take root, perhaps because they're the ones I've been asking myself all along:
— "How do we direct our record keeping toward justice?"
— "Why did men never own curtains?"
— "How do you get someone you want to want you?"
— "How many times had you said, 'If I just looked a little different, I'd be drowning in love?'"
— "If she is driving at sixty-five miles per hour, and the average length of an audiobook is ten hours, how many months will it take for you to realize she has wasted half of her MFA program driving to her girlfriend's house to be yelled at for dive days?"
— "Why do we teach girls that their perspectives are inherently untrustworthy?"
— "Was she trained to find you, or were you trained to be found?"
— "What, I wonder, is Maureen's definition of ordinary? Brutality? Love?" (referencing this ending line in an old Maureen Dowd column that... hasn't aged well to say the least: "experiencing the ordinary brutality of love does not make one a victim. It makes one an adult.")
— "What does it mean for something to be true?"
— "Did any of them gingerly touch their bruises and know that explaining would be too complicated?"
— "If you grasp the story by the base and pull, will the ripping sound indicate the looseness of the roots? What is left behind in the soil?"
Machado's questions have embedded themselves deeper into my brain than I knew foreign thoughts could take root, perhaps because they're the ones I've been asking myself all along:
— "How do we direct our record keeping toward justice?"
— "Why did men never own curtains?"
— "How do you get someone you want to want you?"
— "How many times had you said, 'If I just looked a little different, I'd be drowning in love?'"
— "If she is driving at sixty-five miles per hour, and the average length of an audiobook is ten hours, how many months will it take for you to realize she has wasted half of her MFA program driving to her girlfriend's house to be yelled at for dive days?"
— "Why do we teach girls that their perspectives are inherently untrustworthy?"
— "Was she trained to find you, or were you trained to be found?"
— "What, I wonder, is Maureen's definition of ordinary? Brutality? Love?" (referencing this ending line in an old Maureen Dowd column that... hasn't aged well to say the least: "experiencing the ordinary brutality of love does not make one a victim. It makes one an adult.")
— "What does it mean for something to be true?"
— "Did any of them gingerly touch their bruises and know that explaining would be too complicated?"
— "If you grasp the story by the base and pull, will the ripping sound indicate the looseness of the roots? What is left behind in the soil?"