Carmen Maria Machado was hailed as a modern-day Angela Carter on the publication of her first collection of stories, Her Body and Other Parties, in 2017. Provocative, sensual and gender- and genre-defying, with strong elements of science fiction and gothic horror, its eight fabular tales smouldered defiantly. They pushed at political and psychological boundaries, acknowledging a debt not only to conventional narrative structure but also to fan fiction and urban myth. Through creating often garishly uncomfortable scenarios in prose that was never less than elegant, Machado quickly achieved cult status – as well as being a finalist for several major literary prizes.
Machado’s follow-up is a different beast – one that is just as untamed, original and brilliantly unclassifiable. Instead of a novel, as traditionally anticipated in the wake of a short fiction debut, she has written In the Dream House, a memoir of a tormented, abusive relationship she experienced with a woman, from electrifying first meeting to the shock of discovery that the love object was not all they first appeared to be.
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