User:Thijshijsijsjss/Gossamery/In the Dream House

• Recommended and lended to me by Senka
• Read November - December 2024

In the Dream House is a memoir by Carmen Maria Machado, detailing an abusive relationship she was in. Making use of a different narrative style each chapter, it is a exploration not of just a personal story, but also how we interface with memories and stories in general.

One chapter is of particular interest to me: Dream House as a Choose Your Own Adventure Story. This chapter details a morning routine. It is a CYOA in the classical sense: we get to read a paragraph of text, after which we are presented a handful of options that direct us to a new page. The trick is that these redirections are heavily looping. Crucially, this reinforces the inescapable feeling of this routine (and the abuse in it). It manages to realy make use of the CYOA format not as a gimmick, but as a narrative device to convey and emphasize a feeling.

For a book serious in topic and often bleak in feelings, this is the joy of reading it: seeing (and imagining) how different narrative devices can be appropriately used not as a self-indulgent facade for literary depth, but as a liberating escape from form rich of potential to extend the possibilities of conveying content through form.