![]() However, by bringing her experience into the register of fairy tales, she deconstructs the pain of that punctured dream. Without context or precedents, she wasn’t able to make sense of her situation. The author once wrote that she found it difficult to conceive of her relationship as abusive because she hadn’t encountered narratives of queer domestic abuse before. It magnifies the resonances of certain actions and hints at a parallel world where the pain felt by Machado is legible, tangible and as ripe as a fruit. ![]() The book is also sprinkled with more than 50 footnotes, many referencing Stith Thompson’s “Motif-Index of Folk-Literature.” When recalling a night with her girlfriend, for example, Machado annotates the passage “Midnight comes” with the following note: “Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type C752.1, Taboo: doing thing after sunset (nightfall).” The device works as a running gag, though it also gives the text an eerie quality. ![]() A few of the titles refuse the characterization altogether and use it as a jumping point to explore a specific episode of the relationship. ![]() ![]() Other titles play directly into their titular genres, and some deconstruct them. For example, each chapter follows a naming convention: “Dream House as…” Some chapter titles include Dream House as Noir, Dream House as Self-Help Best Seller, Lipogram, Cautionary Tale. The book takes on a series of inventive formal experiments. ![]()
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