Antonia Bernardin

My 43rd book of the year was In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, a memoir about an abusive relationship the author was in with a same sex partner.

A summary attempt

Her story is told through a series of abstract snapshots, centred around ‘the woman in the dream house’, jumping in time between both before, during and after, seemingly sporadically. The story builds a picture of how Carmen found herself in an abusive relationship, showing the trauma bonding, love bombing cycle without being expositional. The book also covers stats and literature around abuse in same sex partnerships, particularly lesbian relationships, of which, there is scarily little information, or so the author reveals. It talks about how lesbian abusers, are just like any other abuser, they follow the same patterns and victimise in the same way but she raises the point of how it is not talked about, how the law barely protects heterosexual DV victims, let alone those in same sex partnerships. How there are documented cases where they didn’t even believe a woman could abuse another. All of this is told through abstract, timeless, ethereal story bites.

My thoughts

This is a really powerful book, and, as someone who has reasons to relate to a person who has suffered emotional or coercive abuse, I found it quite an emotional listen. I think it is incredibly clever how the author walks us towards the train crash, of seeing the red flags, the abusive cycle, the love bombing until we find ourselves, much like the author did, in a terrible situation we could see coming in hindsight, but we didn’t know we were walking to the cliff edge until we fell off. It shows how she was gaslit, how she is made to question her own memories or emotions and how she is gradually broken down to the point of accepting behaviour she never would have at the start.

If you are able to relate to this topic, or think you might, this book might be incredibly validating for your experiences. Especially the part afterwards where people don’t believe her, or downplay her experiences because the abuse never became physical.

The facts about abuse in LGBTQ+ relationships, with a particular focus on lesbian relationships, were both very interesting and eye opening. As someone who identifies as straight and perhaps out of ignorance, I never given a lot of thought about how difficult it might be to get help, be believed or get a conviction, in a same sex relationship. It seems obvious, given how little justice heterosexual partners receive in our current world, but I’m glad that this book made me think about it.

I listened to the audio book that is narrated by the author, which makes it very impactful.

I actually haven’t read any of this author’s fiction work, but I will now after reading this, it was so well written!

If you want to learn more about some of the terms I’ve used here, my favourite podcast, Ladies and Tangents, does a great job explaining them in this episode: Trauma Bonding part 1 and part 2.