Hello, Friends! I missed you all last month when I missed the magazine’s deadline because yes, I was reading! Let me tell you. Any good habit can become a vice if you’re not careful, y’all. I have two very different books for you this month. I loved both of them; each gave me a sense of wan<ng to start the book again immediately aOer finishing. As always, be aware of your own capacity to read about the struggles of others. Drop me a line at Reviews May Vary@ gmail.com with your thoughts and comments about these books as well as recommenda<ons that you think I should read. Follow along with my bookventures on Facebook, Instagram, and youtube.com/c/reviewsmayvary.
more and more of herself to “the woman in the dream house.” It is a short book, but does not feel like a quick read. It is well worth the time.
Here's a book quote for you:
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (Memoir) This book is a memoir that is rich in metaphor and lyrical language. Each chapter is short and explores the author’s experience as a young co-ed involved in one of her earliest roman<c rela<onships. The essays take you from the exci<ng beginnings through the increasing emo<onal abuse and manipula<on of their <me together. Each chapter is short and thoughnul. Interes<ngly, Machado offers references in footnote to classic literary and movie themes that are reflected in her stories. You know that Machado is eventually free of this rela<onship, she assures the reader several <mes and currently lives with her wife in Philadelphia, but you s<ll worry for her as she loses
“We can’t stop living. Which means we have to live, which means we are alive, which means we are humans and we are human: some of us are unkind and some of us are confused and some of us sleep with the wrong people and some of us make bad decisions and some of us are murderers. And it sounds terrible but it is, in fact, freeing: the idea that queer does not equal good or pure or right. It is simply a state of being one subject to politics, to its own social forces, to larger narratives, to moral complexities of every kind. So bring on the queer villains, the queer heroes, the queer sidekicks and secondary characters and protagonists and extras. They can be a complete cast unto themselves. Let them have agency, and then let them go.”
Carmen Maria Machado,
In the Dream House
