In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado is a memoir about her abusive marriage written through the lens of the horror genre. The book is written interestingly as she does not use a common style to detail the abuse she suffered at the hands of her ex-wife. Instead, Machado uses a horror structure in order to describe what it was like to suffer through this marriage. The memoir follows the period from meeting to divorce, sharing an emotional but haunting look into the abuse and trauma that Machado suffered throughout this relationship, and how it was necessary for her to share it with the world.
The book is about Machado’s ex-marriage, and it details her life through meeting her ex-wife and her experience throughout the marriage. She wanted to explore and highlight the abuse she underwent in a same-sex marriage, and how living through this nightmare allowed her to meet her current wife. It is a personal and touchy subject, but when writing it, she thought it was crucial to discuss the dark sides you can experience in relationships, and the necessity of saving yourself from them. It is a story about pain and endurance written like a horror narrative that works very well.
The writing style that Machado takes in In the Dream House is a risk, but one that pays off really well. While I have not read a large number of memoirs, I am familiar with the genre, and she does not follow any typical style that memoirs usually have. She creates a new way of writing for this work, and she blends together different elements from the horror genre in order to create an atmosphere of pain and confusion to show the reader what it was like to go through what she did. She creates an immersive experience to tackle such a personal and private subject. In order to explore her trauma, she had to reinvent ways to talk about it. It is a haunting novel, and the creative aspects of it are incredibly memorable, simply because of how well it works.
I highly recommend this novel to anyone interested in reading a memoir, interested in horror, or interested in experimental writing. Carmen Maria Machado’s other works—mainly her fiction—are based in horror, so she has a background in that genre. She uses the skills she gained from her previous writing in order to fully articulate the painful ordeal and suffering she faced in her first marriage. She also uses these tools in order to fully encapsulate the reader into the emotions she herself was experiencing during this time. She put us in her shoes through her creative use of prose, and it worked very well. Although I think her prose is one of the best parts of the memoir, it could be jarring at first if you are unaware or unfamiliar with her style of writing. It is a very candid but surrealist way of looking at abuse, especially the abuse she suffered, but ultimately, it works.
