She accused Machado of cheating on her with everyone from friends to her dad. The woman became paranoid when Machado didn’t answer her phone. Soon she was doubting her own perception of realityīut soon little problems arose. They had great sex, met each other’s parents, and went on road trips between Iowa and Bloomington, Indiana, where the girlfriend lived in a cabin, which Machado calls “the Dream House”. She finally felt she had found the person she had been waiting for. Machado, who had grown up in suburban Pennsylvania, had dated plenty of men but she had never been in a relationship with a woman before. When Machado was at the Iowa writers’ school in her late 20s, she met a witty, worldly, petite blond Harvard graduate who spoke French and was a “mix of butch and femme that drives you crazy”. With hindsight, her short story, Mothers, which deals obliquely with domestic abuse between two women, now appears to be a rehearsal.įor all the experimentation, the basic narrative is straightforward. She was shortlisted for a US National book award in 2017 for her gothic-flavoured short stories about sex and gender. Machado is at the forefront of a wave of writers (including Sarah Hall, Julia Armfield, Fiona Mozley and Sophie Mackintosh) producing sensual, defiant, highly inward stories that centre on the female body. It ensnares and unsettles, tantalises and wrongfoots. But that doesn’t quite capture how it haunts the grey areas of abuse, how it shatters the memoir form, how like a dream it shapeshifts.
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