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Emily

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In the Dream House

by Carmen Maria Machado (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in May 2020

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Emily said: " Oh my goodness

This book has completely shifted and reframed the ways in which I think about self perception, about queerness, power and (of course) relationships. I have never read something so frighteningly sad and yet so compelling. It has a beauti Oh my goodness

This book has completely shifted and reframed the ways in which I think about self perception, about queerness, power and (of course) relationships. I have never read something so frighteningly sad and yet so compelling. It has a beautiful, introspective intensity that holds the nuances of abuse and flawed experience in all of their unfathomable complexity. The writing holds true, arresting power in its descriptions of powerlessness. Machado’s use of architectural metaphor, playful intertextuality and form is absolutely perfect—I knew from the outset that this prose would stay with me, perhaps forever. I am left haunted, hopeful and profoundly angry.

José Esteban Muñoz “When the historian of queer experience attempts to document a queer past, there is often a gatekeeper, representing a straight present.”

‘people kiss and hold hands and fall in love and fuck and cry and laugh and hurt others and nurse broken hearts and start wars and pull sleeping children out of car seats and shout at each other. If you could harness that energy—that constant, roving hunger—you could do wonders with it. You could push the earth inch by inch through the cosmos until it collided heart-first with the sun’

‘I was whole—a symbiotic relationship between my best and worst parts’

‘And that sounds terrible but it is, in fact, freeing: the idea that queer does not equal good or pure or right [...] Let them have agency, and then let them go’

‘you think to yourself mozzarella is basically water cheese and then you go to another room and fall asleep’

‘I could sit there, watching the door test its hinges with every blow. I could sit there on the floor and cry and say anything I liked because in that moment it was my own little space, even though after that it would never be mine again’

‘Every narrative you write of smashed to pieces and shoved into a constraint [...] You can’t bring yourself to say what you really think: I broke the stories down because I was breaking down and didn’t know what else to do’

‘You shouldn’t be on this page. There’s no way to get here from the choices given to you. You flipped here because you got sick of the cycle. You wanted to get out. You’re smarter than me.
Go to page 171.’

‘among them, every stranger who has ever seen you cry in public is doing the breast stroke. You turn from their pity and lead the way; the whole party swims to the shore’

‘A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to’ ...more "

progress:

(page 200 of 251)
— May 05, 2020 08:06AM

May 05, 2020 02:20PM · see review