Yet the arc of this ordeal, although it forms the book’s skeleton, is not Machado’s true subject. Is it when she flies into a rage after Machado fails to respond immediately to a text? When she digs her fingers into Machado’s arm? Over the course of a formative love affair, the woman-who dwells, witchlike, in a cabin, in Bloomington, Indiana, which Machado calls the “Dream House”-will accuse Machado of cheating throw things at her lie to her manipulate her scream at her and reduce her, again and again, to tears. Just as it is difficult to say when the book begins, it is difficult to say when Machado’s girlfriend, blonde and slight, also a writer, first reveals her nature. The memoir, by the acclaimed author of the short-story collection “ Her Body and Other Parties”-which was a finalist, in 2017, for the National Book Award-chronicles Machado’s experience in a horrifying relationship. Paging through this front matter feels like waiting for a haunted carnival ride to start, only to be wrong-footed. It contains a dedication, three epigraphs, an overture (declaring the author’s suspicion of paratext), a prologue, and another epigraph. If Machado's heroines are madwomen, it's because they come up against questions like these, and don't so much go off a cliff as realize that living in this world requires dissociation, fantasy, and extreme psychological measures.The antechamber of “ In the Dream House,” a new work of memoir-cum-criticism by Carmen Maria Machado, is crowded. Why are women raped and killed? That's where the brain sticks. Though it doesn't have the narrative energy of the other stories, 'Especially Heinous' does create a slight estrangement from our culture that allows us to see that culture afresh, and be reminded of the kinds of questions that trip up the brain of any reasonable person: Why do we watch shows about women being raped and killed? Because women are raped and killed. It splits open like a body that's been in the Hudson.' Meanwhile, Benson and Stabler are pursued by shadowy dopplegangers called Henson and Abler. She throws it into a garbage can and it hits the empty bottom, wet and heavy. For instance, 'Sophomore Jinx: The second time the basketball team covers up a murder, the coach decides he's finally had enough.' Or 'Stocks and Bondage: Benson takes the bag of rotten vegetables out of the trunk when Stabler isn't looking. The longest story is called 'Especially Heinous' and is a series of short, increasingly absurd summaries of fake Law & Order: SVU episodes. in a way that reinforces the sincere uncanny power and reach of those stories. Enshrines a particular kind of young female culture - ghost stories, girl scout camp stories, urban legends.

Carmen maria machado the resident