In the Dream House: Winner of The Rathbones Folio Prize 2021

Description

'Ravishingly beautiful' - Observer 'Excruciatingly honest and yet vibrantly creative' - Irish Times 'Provocative and rich' - Economist 'Daring, chilling, and unlike anything else you've ever read' - Esquire 'An absolute must-read for 2020' - Stylist In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and examines them from distinct angles. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction, infusing all with her characteristic wit, playfulness and openness to enquiry. The result is a powerful book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of Her Body and Other Parties, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and is the writer-in-residence at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where she lives with her wife.

A tender, incandescent memoir like no other. There's no doubt that Machado is one of the brightest literary talents around. -- Johanna Thomas-Corr * Observer * Absolutely remarkable ... What makes this book truly exceptional is how Machado creates an archive where, shamefully, there is none -- Roxane Gay This book is devastating. Machado is a sublime, phenomenal, breathtakingly good writer and a new work by her is a momentous occasion. -- Daisy Johnson Machado's dazzling memoir of violence in a queer relationship flips acrobatically between genres - myth, sci-fi thriller, soap opera, comedy of errors - to document her abuse with steely precision. * Daily Telegraph * Carmen Maria Machado lets loose the full force of her gothic imagination to recount her real-life entanglement in an addictive but psychologically abusive same-sex relationship, and in language so sensual the violence comes as a shock ... sublime -- Marina Benjamin * New Statesman * This is challenging and thrilling. There is never one reading. Memoir here is resurrection, rebirth and archive. In the Dream House is a dark jewel reflecting something startling - familiar and strange. - * Guardian * Merge the house and the woman-watch the woman experience her own body as a haunted house, a place of sudden, inexplicable terrors-and you are reading the blazingly talented Carmen Maria Machado. -- Parul Sehgal * The New York Times * Machado's genre-crushing memoir is a meditation on the eclipse of knowledge and intuition by the narcotic light of a destructive bond that feels like love. -- Melissa Broder Innovative and haunting, compelling and jarring, Machado has created what is essentially a new form of memoir ... excruciatingly honest and yet vibrantly creative. * The Irish Times * Provocative and rich ... the cycle of abuse is a kind of poisonous enchantment in which victims can be enthralled. Ms Machado's memoir casts a powerful counter-spell * Economist * Astonishing ... Machado writes with such precision and poetry it's hard not to be utterly blown away as she pinpoints those moments that can cause the destruction of all relationships. An absolute must-read for 2020. * Stylist * Breathtakingly inventive. . . . Machado's writing, with its heat and precise command of tone, has always had a sentient quality. But what makes In the Dream House a particularly self-aware structure-which is to say, a true haunted house-is the intimation that it is critiquing itself in real time. .Here and in her short stories, Machado subjects the contemporary world to the logic of dreaming. -- Katy Waldman * New Yorker * Carmen Maria Machado has re-imagined the memoir genre, creating a work of art both breathtakingly inventive and urgently true. In the Dream House is crucial queer testimony. I've never read a book like it. -- Alex Marzano-Lesnevich The way [In the Dream House] seamlessly weaves the facts of [Machado's] life with fictions-the ghosts that still haunt her, the fact that even time travel could not undo what's been done-is a masterstroke. Machado's that writer who can convincingly code-switch between sci-fi nerdery and lyrical realism. She's equally at home in both worlds. * Wired * Piercing. . . . In the Dream House makes for uneasy but powerful reading. * USA Today * A raw, innovative memoir. * BBC Culture * Realistic, poetic, and sometimes grimly funny ... A hard-hitting and layered book that reminds us we need to continue addressing abuse with queer women's communities * Diva * A groundbreaking memoir in terms of both form and content. . . . Get ready for Machado to take you on several breakneck cross-country trips of the soul. * The Observer * An unflinching, engrossing memoir. * POPSUGAR * A stunning book, both deeply felt and elegantly written. * Boston Globe * Forget everything you think you know about memoir when reading Carmen Maria Machado's brilliant, twisting, provocative entry in the genre. * NYLON * A towering achievement from a truly outstanding writer. * Independent Best LGBTQ+ Books * A masterpiece. Proceed with caution. -- Phoebe Bridgers