This is such an important, impressive memoir. Carmen Maria Machado begins In the Dream House, which is split into five sections of 1-5 page chapters, by explaining how her work serves as an archive, a word whose derivation translates to “house of the ruler.” Archives are often consulted and respected as storehouses of information, memory, and history. However, Machado reminds us that these houses are constructed by whoever has control of a story. In another time, close to our own, we would never get to read this archival account of an abusive relationship between two women. In the aughts, we would instead focus on the promising literary talent of Machado’s ex-girlfriend, while her domestic failures were relegated to an editor’s note or deep web blog post. In the end of the twentieth century, Machado’s chronicle of her experience might have found a home in the queer academy or activist community, but neither would reach even the margins of mass consumption. Earlier than that, I fear there would be little to no record of this relationship at all. I feel incredibly fortunate that I am around in a time where a book of this magnitude can exist “for whoever needs it.”

First surprise: I found the choppiness of this memoir to be quite helpful. It allows Machado to stretch from moments of intense cruelty in her personal life to explanations of our society’s political and cultural failures to address domestic violence in queer relationships. These are leaps that feel appropriate to the archival form, and they enable this small book to feel massive in its scope. I’ve always been impressed by authors who can connect film history, court cases, biographical information, and other random factoids to their personal narratives. Attempts to do so often come across as gimmicky showboating, none of which is the case here. When Machado uses a 1940s film to discuss the origin of gaslighting, or legal theory to describe the mental conundrum most folks encounter when trying to understand same-gender abuse, there is no clearer way she could have explained it. This is masterful curation, which allows for an unforgettable testimony.

As someone who struggles with my personal memory, I’ve always been troubled by how much society helps me to forget. This includes our collective ability to look away from queer domestic abuse, in part due to its unraveling of lesbian utopias. Machado provides instance after instance of queer women suffering from a strong case of disbelief towards victims and survivors of abuse in their own community, all of which brought to mind my own experiences. More than any other group I can think of, lesbians take pride in our evolved, healthier relationship dynamics. Many of us subconsciously seek to justify why two women should be together by positing that women are better at being together--better at communicating, at accepting each other's faults, at respecting each other's boundaries. This makes it challenging when we don’t--when WNBA couples are entangled in domestic violence, or when white mothers abuse and ultimately murder their black foster children. Even in less dire circumstances, I’ve struggled to find language for the sinking pit in my stomach about a fellow lesbian couple that I know isn’t working out. Through her memoir, Machado unearths the relational language many queer women have created for ourselves: tropes of pitiful, longsuffering straight women; domineering, noncommittal straight men; and harmonious, endearingly zealous lesbians. None of these are honest enough to account for the emotional manipulation, financial abuse, and/or psychological torment that is the lived experience of too many queer women.

This memoir has provided context for many of the experiences I haven’t had a name for, and many of the stories that haven’t yet been recorded. I am incredibly thankful for Machado’s witness, which excels as a form of “nonstalgia.” In the Dream House is a reminder to remember a relationship’s dark moments, an imperative not to underestimate these telling betrayals as “rare exceptions”, and a framework to identify them as central parts of a cycle that can be broken. She’s given us a collection to not forget, and I hope we all can explore its contents.

***Bonus: My Favorite Chapters***

1. In my opinion, one of the clearest childhood moments that speaks to the archival process is “Dream House as Half Credit.” Here, Machado is explaining her father’s test-taking wisdom of writing down everything you knew about a topic when you didn’t know the answer. Her end goal? “Let it never be said I didn’t try.”

2. “Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure” is an imaginative encapsulation of the “damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t” nature of her former relationship.

3. “Dream House as Queer Villainy” and “Dream House as 9 Thornton Square” make me hope that Machado picks up a side hustle in film criticism. Her analysis of a villain in the 1944 film Gaslight is too spot-on not to share: “This is all to say, his motivations are not unexplainable. They are, in fact, aggravatingly practical—driven by greed, augmented by a desire for control, shot through with a cat’s instinct for toying with its prey. A reminder, perhaps, that abusers do not need to be, and rarely are, cackling maniacs. They just need to warn something, and not care how they get it.”

4. The “Dream House as Deja Vu” chapters, which are eerily linear and make the reader question why we are so familiar with the manipulative relationship continuum.