I gasped when flint was struck, and when sparks flew whimsically out of the hearth. I don’t love it.I felt I knew terrors that lingered just beyond my vision as if their very existence was seared into my cells. But the idea of a grade-school teacher or an old classmate or a relative reading it – it’s strange. And it’s weird to imagine people I know reading it. But that didn’t stop me from returning to questions like is it too much, and should I be doing this. I thought about quitting many times but ultimately concluded that I should do it I had to do it. I was definitely anxious about writing this book. After the structure came to me, I knew I’d found the right road into the material. At some point, I was teaching at a summer writing camp for teenagers and talking a lot about genre – which is normally how I organize all discussions about writing and craft – and during the conversation, I thought, “Oh, genre might be an interesting avenue into this project.” It ended up becoming the structure for the entire book. It never quite took – nothing I wrote seemed right or good. When I first tried to write about the events of the memoir, I tried to tell it in a straightforward way. This book is incredibly raw and equally engrossing, with writing that is beautiful and riveting despite its painful subject material.
Using short chapters driven by a variety of different genres, Machado chronicles the abuse she suffered during a relationship with a fellow female writer, viewing their relationship with a different lens in each chapter. In her acclaimed memoir, In the Dream House, she now brings an innovative approach to nonfiction. I n her debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado combined genres to create impressively original, gripping stories.
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