Rachel Yoder

In this blazingly smart and voracious debut, an artist turned stay-at-home mom becomes convinced she's turning into a dog.

One day, the mother was a mother, but then one night, she was quite suddenly something else...

An ambitious mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, but the experience does not match her imagination. Two years later, she steps into the bathroom for a break from her toddler's demands, only to discover a dense patch of hair on the back of her neck. In the mirror, her canines suddenly look sharper than she remembers. Her husband, who travels for work five days a week, casually dismisses her fears from faraway hotel rooms.

As the mother's symptoms intensify, and her temptation to give in to her new dog impulses peak, she struggles to keep her alter-canine-identity secret. Seeking a cure at the library, she discovers the mysterious academic tome which becomes her bible, 'A Field Guide to Magical Women: A Mythical Ethnography', and meets a group of mommies involved in a multilevel-marketing scheme who may also be more than what they seem.

An outrageously original novel of ideas about art, power, and womanhood wrapped in a satirical fairy tale, 'Nightbitch' will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. And you should. You should howl as much as you want.

A Novel

Nightbitch

One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else...

At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.

Instead, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...

Only a little way into this novel, Yoder presents a stark contrast between the past and the present; between self without baby and self with baby. I feel the overwhelming sense that our protagonist is aware of this contrast and may even actively choose to separate her existence in this way. Perhaps this is a depiction of how she copes with guilt or frustration, or both, as a mother. Perhaps it is a reflection of the boxes that she feels she has stepped into with who she is at the time, or, perhaps, it is a reflection of the boxes that society as a whole pushes her into. Perhaps it is both.

Lily Cooper

‘Yet now there was nothing. Not a single creative impulse inside her, no matter how she searched’.

hessensitive

The magic-hour light cast everything in melancholic tones-the gelatinous bits of noodles left on the boy's plastic plate, the vagrant peas beneath his high chair, the clutter of wavward puppets and matchbox cars strewn across counters & bedside the cat-food dish. In such moments, she could almost touch her loneliness, as if it were her second child. 

Georgie Wishart

Sunday morning, she rushed from bed to the bathroom, for she felt the impending blood-fall waiting inside her, a deluge that gushed into the toilet when she sat down and provided her great relief, while at the same time, inspiring a wave of ultimate exhaustion, an unwieldy project she must now attend for the next week.

High Fidelity

Yes, indeed, she was a good mother, one of the very best.

A testament to her goodness: that preternatural ability to wake and wake and wake again, night after night, ever since the day the boy was born. Her husband—bless his heart—had never done well with sleep deprivation, yet she, surprisingly, had taken to it as if she hadn’t been a lifelong oversleeper, as if waking at all hours of the night and getting up at 5:30 a.m. was something she was somehow genetically programmed for.

bianca

This must be what it means to be an animal, to look at another and say, I am so much that other thing that we are part of one another. Here is my skin. Here yours. Beneath the moon, we pile inside the warm cave, becoming one creature to save our warmth. We breathe together and dream together. This is how it has always been and how it will continue to be. We keep each other alive through an unbroken lineage of togetherness.

Hello, she wanted to say to him. I am your wife. I am a woman. I am this animal. I have become everything. I am new and also ancient. I have been ashamed but will be no more.

I am interested in longing, in longing so deep it threatens to splinter a person apart. I am interested in a profound longing for an unknown existence, or for a better life, without any idea of what the specifics of that life would look like. I’m not getting this right—I’m interested in knowing about the longing that unites all women, all mothers. What is that longing? How could we possibly long for something beyond our offspring?

It’s almost as if having a child allows a woman to see how much infinite potential there is, allows her to see infinity itself. (Am I making any sense?)

It’s almost as if having a child does not sate a deep yearning but instead compounds it.

Look, the mother says, look at what I am capable of. I make life. I am life.

…it was something very private and sad, those deeply held dreams that a mother had tucked into a cold, dark corner of herself.

How many generations of women had delayed their greatness only to have time extinguish it completely? How many women had run out of time while the men didn’t know what to do with theirs? And what a mean trick to call such things holy or selfless. How evil to praise women for giving up each and every dream.

Was that mom happy? … Maybe she didn’t need to be fulfilled in the way [she] herself needed it? Maybe her kids were enough? [She] desperately yearned for such a thing, for her son’s delirious cackling and pudgy little wrists and garbled, lispy words of love to obliterate every last smidge of ambition. Why couldn’t mothering and cooking and grocery shopping and cleaning and laundry … really fill her with glee and well-being and a sense of a life well lived?

Sometimes … I imagine abandoning my family, abandoning this entire life.

Her secrets were the only things these days that were purely hers, things apart from mother and wife and middle-aged woman. Now her secrets were nearly as precious to her as her art had once been, and, as she thought about it, there was something that had been secret about her art, too. The dreaming of ideas, the excitement she held silently inside as she began to work, the heights to which she fantasized a project might grow, the hours of work alone, the thinking and imagining, the conversations with herself. There was something beautifully, deliciously secret and intimate and intoxicating about that life, the art she had made.

She likes the idea of being a dog, because she can bark and snarl and not have to justify it. She can run free if she wants. She can be a body and instinct and urge. She can be hunger and rage, thirst and fear, nothing more. 

Before my child, I had never longed for a family, or even to be married. Instead, I fantasized about the echoing rooms of a museum, the expanse of dustless floors and white walls, the certain sacred hush that comes with such spaces, and then my work there, in that space. 

I had imagined this entire life. I had dreamt it.

But then my body. Then a child. And, yes, he has brought me great joy—being a mother, despite my loudest protestations, has been pure and sweet and true—but there is not room for the child within the sun-washed studio. Or, rather, there is not room for art within my house with my child. It is as if all my dreams have been reset. The walls are blank, and with them I am blank, too.

He didn’t understand anything, not her sadness or her anger, not why the dogs had been so oddly disturbing. And she hadn’t even begun to try to explain how she had felt called by the retriever, how it had somehow spoken to her, how it had been so alluring, so comforting, as if it understood all her woes, all her innermost urges and struggles. No, she would never try to explain such a thing to her husband. It would ruin whatever small bit of credibility she had left. Her intuition, her feelings didn’t matter to him—they were unbelievable, in fact. That was the precise word—unbelievable—in the manner of tall tales, urban legends, folk remedies, aliens, mythical creatures rumored to roam the woods, and so her feelings were immediately discounted, even though she knew them to be the truest things in her human experience, a light to show the way.

You could always tell a mother by that look, she had come to find, one that encompassed not only exhaustion and boredom, but something more. It was as though the mothers were staring toward something they had lost, something they couldn’t even remember. What was it…?

You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don’t let it rage into a mountain of light, because that’s not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn. You look into the eyes of other girls and see their fires flickering there, offer conspiratorial nods, never speak aloud of a near-unbearable heat, a growing conflagration.

ONE DAY, THE MOTHER was a mother, but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else.

Clara Gauthier

I made you, and I destroy you as well. I am your entire world, and then, also, I am the person you leave behind. I will always be with you. You will never understand me. 

Izzy Burgess

You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and rend it. You protect it at all costs. You don't let it rage into a mountain of light, because that's not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn. You look into the eyes of other girls and see their fires flickering there, offer conspiratorial nods, never speak aloud of a near-unbearable heat, a growing conflagration.

Finn Salter

I want to run and run and run into the cornfields all the way to a stream and then follow it to the ocean-I'm sorry, but I'm not coming back-and I want to have very, very passionate sex with a stranger and I want to sit on a fully decorated cake without underwear and I want to perform a large anonymous act of extreme vandalism and I want to be an artist and a woman and a mother I mean a monster I want to be a monster

ohseababy

Only think I dislike more than obvious and transparent metaphors/allegories are obvious and transparent metaphors/allegories that are then simplified and stated to their audience. Bleh.

Nightbitch is a haunting, gruesome and beautiful fever dream. I was lost in it, I was bewitched by it and I was completely consumed by it.

3.5
Never read a book about motherhood before. The descriptions of isolation, relationships, art, what it means to be an artist, and feminine rage are moving but occasionally lack nuance by giving no room for interpretation. Some quotes from this book are so amazing. Literally changed my perception of motherhood so much. 

I loved how after she accepted herself as Nightbitch, she became the art and her relationship with her family and herself became more real almost immediately.

The writing really ruined it for me. I’m following the book when it comes to the story & the magical realism & the feminist take on motherhood & women’s labour etc. but the writing did so much telling rather than showing I just couldn’t get into it. 

soot

it started off meh and felt a bit pretentious but once the more body horror elements hit, i was able to enjoy it more

Karmen 

should've been a crime to let such a cunty book cover go to waste 

baku

cloud

listening to africa by toto makes me act the exact same way.

satirical and magical. enjoyed the ending the most, the culmination of the exploitation and nuances of modern motherhood. however I think there was too much "telling" of the metaphors/themes throughout. interested to see how this will be as a film !

marlisa

Maria

i hate everyone in this book including the baby

amari

I really enjoyed the blend of magic and realism, and the exploration of motherhood. Very visceral. I can imagine the writing style wouldn't be for everyone. 

“I want to be an artist and a woman and a mother I mean a monster I want to be a monster"

Nightbitch, a book that took me 6 months to read and caused last year's slump, had all the makings of a profound but relatable novel in a bizarre packaging: a strange and exciting synopsis alluding to kafka, an allegory of female rage, postpartum realities, and motherhood in general, and what a cover, right? I was so thrilled going into this, but sadly, it just went in circles and flatlined.

On the rare parts where it was good, it was really good — ravaging. Nightbitch would also have these snarky side comments about everyone, which was pretty hilarious. But mostly, the inner monologues about her mundane life just rambled on forever. This could be intentional ala Bunny, which is often being compared to this book, and Woolf's The Waves, to capture her unfiltered, animalistic thoughts, but sadly, it just didn't have that kind of impact. 

y✦

“I want to be an artist and a woman and a mother I mean a monster I want to be a monster"

Nightbitch, a book that took me 6 months to read and caused last year's slump, had all the makings of a profound but relatable novel in a bizarre packaging: a strange and exciting synopsis alluding to kafka, an allegory of female rage, postpartum realities, and motherhood in general, and what a cover, right? I was so thrilled going into this, but sadly, it just went in circles and flatlined.

On the rare parts where it was good, it was really good — ravaging. Nightbitch would also have these snarky side comments about everyone, which was pretty hilarious. But mostly, the inner monologues about her mundane life just rambled on forever. This could be intentional ala Bunny, which is often being compared to this book, and Woolf's The Waves, to capture her unfiltered, animalistic thoughts, but sadly, it just didn't have that kind of impact. 

[ me: give this woman a break!!

rachel yoder: arf arf motherf*cker ]

Cody Degen

** spoiler alert **
           I wasn’t expecting it to be as much about what life is like as a SAHM mom as I was expecting her to be a full on werewolf doing werewolf things but I enjoyed and appreciated that aspect of it. 

Even though it was different than I expected I really appreciated how fucking weird the book was willing to be, although for all that I wish it would’ve had the courage to not spend the last few pages essentially explaining the themes and ideas of the book verbatim. I thought they were communicated really effectively to begin with so it kinda ended on a sour note in the same way that someone telling a pretty good joke would if they worried you wouldn’t get it so they explained why it was funny.

Wow what a harrowing, liberating, exhilarating, horrifying take on motherhood, womanhood and personhood.

I loved that it got weirder, wilder, and bitchier as it went. I can see why folks abandon it in the first section. For something so intense, the MC feels so distant at times. And the intellectual feminist awakening she has around just asking her husband to do things and then he does them and then she loves him again and then he’s cool with her being Nightbitch … idk. Felt a little “women are just holding themselves back” to me.

But omg when she killed the cat!!?! And how it all became art at the end?! I’ll be thinking about this for a while.

Amelia Hruby

‘I want to be a monster’ too 🐺

Wow what a harrowing, liberating, exhilarating, horrifying take on motherhood, womanhood and personhood.

I loved that it got weirder, wilder, and bitchier as it went. I can see why folks abandon it in the first section. For something so intense, the MC feels so distant at times. And the intellectual feminist awakening she has around just asking her husband to do things and then he does them and then she loves him again and then he’s cool with her being Nightbitch … idk. Felt a little “women are just holding themselves back” to me.

But omg when she killed the cat!!?! And how it all became art at the end?! I’ll be thinking about this for a while.

fatru tamzil

Nightbitch was, in my opinion, a hell of a ride. 

I received this read as a recommendation from a friend. A very specific recommendation: I wanted to see the feral, unhinged girls actually win in the book. I don't want them to be punished. I want them to get what they wanted to and get away with it. And on that front? Nightbitch delivered. We met a character that is called 'the Nightbitch', she is your regular Mother, your regular housewife that tends to children and her husband. One day, though, she felt a change in her being--fur sprouting, canine teeth growing--her husband of course didn't buy this, but Nightbitch is persistent that she is changing, especially because she felt the changes herself. 

This book is about feminine rage through and through. We see how much Nightbitch--Mother--rages inside for not being able to be herself after marriage. She worked in art, and that might have been not made much money, but she liked it. It makes her feel needed. While she doesn't actively hate being a Mom (in fact, for the majority of the book she shows us that she loves being a mother, she is just tired that all of her responsibilities fall only unto her shoulder, and none of her husband's. ), she wanted to do something more. Hence, the transformation of her being a Nightbitch, something whole and something Feral, and something Other than the expected role society gave her. 

I really like how crass-cut and brutal the critiques of gender roles in this book. This particular paragraph stood out to me, and I know as soon as I read this paragraph, my read of this book would be enjoyable read: 

No, the mother finally said. I think working mother is perhaps the most nonsensical concept ever concocted. I mean, who isn’t a working mother? And then add a paid job to it, so what are you then? A working working mother? Imagine saying working father.

Throughout the text, this is Nightbitch's recurrent theme: that being a Mother was not enough for Mother. That she needed to be something else entirely, she needed art, she needed to be and to feel like herself, and motherhood, though she was not opposed to it, rarely provided her with that chance. The fire that she nursed, this was her core, her source to be the Nightbitch. And what a beautiful transformation it was. 

I think what makes this book not yet a five stars material for me is that some of the issues felt very...White. The character itself acknowledges this, that the very thing they are able to do is because they have the privileges to do so because they are a White Woman. And while acknowledging that is a good thing, the subtle white feminism that creeps on this book make it not a 100% enjoyable reading experience. 

Still, Nightbitch is a hell of a reading for its feminime rage and its complex characters and feral Mothers.

jess larry

first dnf of 2023 🎁

its so exhausting, too many metaphors, excessively long sentences & an all over the place writing style

Taous Merakchi

a beautiful and conceptual exploration of the effects of postpartum and the ways that violence is so inherent in many aspects of motherhood. loved it but took me a while to read in order to fully understand the novel. why do i keep reading books about postpartum depression despite the fact i plan on never being pregnant ? we will never know 

ayden

only read this bc amy adams is starring in the adaptation, hopefully the movie is good bc this wasn't

Cheri Fuller

Wow. I mean... wow. 

I received the ebook ARC for this one but wasn't in the right frame of mind whenever I thought about actually reading it. So when I saw it on Audible a while back, I bought it. And Cassandra Campbell is a great narrator.

I finally started listening yesterday and just got sucked right in. I'm certain I've never read anything quite like Nightbitch. Also, I fucking love the name of the book and how the main character (and only POV character) refers to herself as Nightbitch. 

The first at least half of the book struck me as a call out for the importance of birth control for heterosexual females. It still makes me feel incredibly grateful that our son was raised in a two-mom household. But as the book moved on, and Nightbitch discovered her own power and strength, it's much less about how shitty parenthood can be for women. 

I will absolutely read this one again. Just to catch the small things I missed the first time. There were lots of laughs mixed in with the gruesomeness, too. And lots of howling. Such beautiful howling!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for bringing this interesting, smart, and unique book to my attention.

I fear motherhood, yet I fear the lack of motherhood 

Kendall

Shareca

NIGHTBITCH 🥩
Rachel Yoder
★★★★ + 🌶🌶 + 🔪🔪🔪🔪
🎧 Cassandra Campbell ★★★★★

TW: 'active & passive animal cruelty'

'Nightbitch' is a thrilling experience — if you are up to it. It is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those who are looking for a cohesive narrative to achieve a cohesive goal. As I did not realize this was an ode to mothers, even though I am not a parent, I find myself empathizing deeply with Nightbitch's stream of consciousness.

Whatever aspect of my work I am performing, there is always a steady flow of thoughts about brutality, stress, fixations, and trepidation, just as Nitchbitch goes through. Sitting there, I often imagine myself running away from my work; I can disappear into the woods, much as The Mother wishes. I manifest a life that I have always longed for: of freedom. The only person who can tell me what I can do and what I cannot do within this space is myself. No one else can explain to me what my responsibilities are. All I need to do is remain and exist as I am. That is what and who 'Nightbitch' is.

'Nightbitch' is a tribute to motherhood, feminists, and men, and especially men. It is a warning that by the time our anger reaches the surface, it has been stored so deeply and so tightly that when it resurfaces, it causes us to howl even louder than before. Thus, the "Nightbitch" is born. It is the outcome of continuous neglect in both our emotional and spiritual development. Nightbitch's experience and anger become manifested in this identity and desire to create art, in the form of "Nightbitch," her dog-self.

'Nightbitch' can be described as: once you realize your inner howl, the patriarchy cannot help but listen to you — upon realizing the true value of oneself, one becomes a millionaire — so allow your chaotic instincts to contribute to the beauty of your life. No matter how different we are, each of us is, in some sense, an animal in the most mundane but also the most artistic way 💓

An intense meditation on motherhood, duality and MLMs.

Nightbitch A Novel

Reviews

Highlights