Nightbitch
Ratings121
Average rating3.6
Absolutely brilliant, entertaining, and unhinged! I had so much fun reading this. I anticipate that this will be my favorite book I read this year. I can't wait what Yoder comes up with next!
Everyone made it seem like this was going to be truly weird and out there. All I got was half of Fleischman Is In Trouble. Did you know being a woman sucks?
I loved this book so so much. A dark, comedic, avant-garde story about motherhood; both raw & real and bizarrely surreal; as beautiful as it was gruesome; a strange, twisted love letter to mothers, primarily, but also all women and our wildness, rage, complexity, and strength.
(TW: Heads up for a few particularly disturbing scenes involving animal deaths. They make sense in context & didn’t affect how much I enjoyed this, but still was a bit of a shock)
So, major TW/CW for delicate animal lovers and crazy cat ladies like me: There is a brutal pet murder scene 65% or so through the book that was gratuitous and very upsetting. There are multiple small animal murders, but the cat is the only one that goes into any depth. Like, why does Nightbeyotch hate her cat? The cat sounds adorable! That is not a thing I needed to read, and I wish I'd known about it beforehand.
On the whole, I found this book generally fast-paced and entertaining. There really are some lovely sentences in it, though it can get repetitive. And, honestly, not much really happens. It also enhances my suspicions that white suburbanites are just...really bizarre? And I'm white, but decidedly NOT suburban. I know people that are involved in MLM schemes, and I'm always flummoxed by them.
As others have noted, this should have been a novella. And whilst I did enjoy reading most of it, I was also flummoxed by the ending. If Jen & Co. were the other dogs, how is it that Nightbeyotch seemed to be the greatest of these suburban dogwomen? How is it that her issues with her husband were solved so easily? And how in the world is her kid going to grow up with any empathy, when he's basically treated like a weird little dogprince who gets whatever he wants?
Though there are some great moments, the ending sort of craps out for me, and the animal cruelty was too much. And her kid...I'd be worried. All that said, Ms. Yoder never bored me, and the premise wasn't too weird for me, since I usually read genre fiction, and transformation is just...a thing sometimes.
Suburban white housewife lit is a whole subgenre now. The dog transformation isn't the weird part.
Although my sentiment towards this movie was simple, I really struggled with how to say it here. I liked this book, overall. However, I also spent so much of the book teetering back and forth from being intrigued to being completely over the main character.
The premise really is as simple as everyone said it was. A housewife thinks she's turning into a dog. Of course, the themes become incredibly clear almost as soon as you get into the book and start seeing her life for what it is, but there really was something about this that kept me curious. It's about motherhood, and about losing one's self to the duties of it. It's about finding community, it's about letting out the literal beast within you when it needs to say something. It's about expression, really. And I liked all of these themes and how they were explored.
However, I would say that the book did often spend too much time languishing in it, which is why I am a little soured by it at the same time. While I did like the book I also felt like I spent an agonizing amount of time with the protagonist just struggling to figure out what was really going on in her situation. it made some of the middle of the story seem, honestly, pointless. We treaded the same sort of water for so much of the book, not getting any clearer. I see now that that may have been because it's how introspectiveness sometimes feels, but it did make the book seem at times lacking focus. As well, while I liked the book and its "twist" ending in hindsight, I did feel something akin to a groan without audibly groaning when I saw where we were going. On reflection I really appreciate that, but contextually it did feel a bit lame in the moment.
Overall I absolutely would recommend this book and I do think it was fun to read. I think I just wish it spent so much of the middle section saying new things or solving plotlines rather than spinning its wheels a bit much for me.
I am neither a housewife or a mother but I do many times compare myself to a dog and reading this book made me feel really vindicated and calm seeing how I'm not the only one that might relate to that feeling.
“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.
But how can I become a god?”
I can't y'all. DNF at 25%. this is just boring and annoying and I heard it gets worse so bye
The first two parts of this book were so relatable to me. A visceral, triggering reminder of what it was like parenting my two young boys during thunderdome. The third part of the book, I thought, was an excellent metaphor for what we are all trying to do, and what a spectacle the experience of motherhood has become. Everyone is always watching. Everyone always has an opinion. Everyone gets uncomfortable but no one looks away.
Anyway, this book was great.
It was okay, not bad, but nothing special. It got really repetitive at times. I mean, I get it, she's a tired mom. I think it could definitely been shorter, a novella would have made more sense. I don't really like stories about motherhood in general because I have no interest in being a mother. This book helped me solidify that. I like the weirdness, and it started off strong because of that, but that and the commentary on motherhood is the only good thing it has going for it. I wish it leaned more into the horror and werewolf aspect, nothing scary really happened, it was just all shock-value stuff. Still glad I read it because the movie is coming out, and even more glad I got it from the library so I didn't waste any money on it.
It was weird in such an understandable way. Yoder wrote carefully and beautifully.
I loved most things about this. Violent, visceral and gross - it's totally unsubtle. I was left cold by the ending - I wasn't sure if it was intentionally undermining the story's manifesto, but I found it so. I think Ursula K. Le Guin's quote about [reinforcing] the masculinist idea of women as primitive was directed at exactly this - but nonetheless I really enjoyed reading about a tired mother just biting stuff!
Absolutely loved this, much of the book felt like it could have been plucked from my future self's mind (the motherhood and relationship parts, not the turning into a dog stuff). I am so nervous for the movie adaptation because I'm not sure how anyone could pull this off in film, but it deserves any traction it gets.
I had such high hopes for this one but I couldn't finish it. I DNFd at 60%. This was a buddy read and my friend doesn't like to officially DNF so she skim read the entire 2nd half of this book.
This would have been better as a 10pg short story. I don't mind metaphorical stories but this was way too long, and I could not stand the main character..at all.
All this really was, at least to me and my friend, is a woman bitterly complaining for 200+ pages about being a mother, having to give up her career to be said mother, and having a husband who is basically useless to her.
I get motherhood is tough. I raised 4 kids on my own...so trust me. I get it, but this was just too much. There are plenty of readers who loved this one and I'm happy for them. It just wasn't for me.
I sincerely appreciate Anchor Books for providing a review copy. While a review wasn't expected, I have offered my opinion and these are my own thoughts.
I received a review copy of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder from Penguin Random House Canada and here is my review!
One moment she is a normal stay at home mother to a hellion toddler just trying to make it through the day and the next.... She's becoming more primal.
Her husband works away and is barely home and the lack of adult interaction is driving her slowly insane... Or is there really a patch of hair on the back of her neck.... Her canines are really getting sharper. The need to sniff things and hump things intensifies to beyond human levels.
Instead of allowing the changes to frighten her, she embraces the new and exciting changings happening to her and nightbitch is born....
I had no idea what to expect with this book. I read the title, saw the genres it landed in and was like.... HUH OK I'm totally gonna do this.
The book feels like an analogy of the changes that a woman goes through when she moves from the persona of being a working woman with a career and friends to a stay at home mother who's cleaning up cheerios off the floor and playing trains for the millionth time. The transition feels animalistic and primordial and I love how the author wove it into the storyline in a reimagined way. I love the descriptions of how she becomes this part woman part dog and how she uses it to bring new life to her relationship with her son.
I wish they explained how she ended up this way (or whether it was a metaphor) but I can overlook that for the excellent writing. The mother isn't given a name other than nightbitch and that adds to the appeal of the story for me.
TRIGGER WARNING I don't usually add them but animal abuse is one for me
If you love a satire read with a fantasy twist, this has to be your next read!
4.5 stars! I really enjoyed it!
Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for sending me a review copy!
Ottessa Moshfegh meets The Yellow Wallpaper. Good, but in that vein, could have been a short story.
I don't love the cat killing scene (it feels unnecessary until the very end in my opinion) and I think it gets repetitive at times. But overall, I think this is a really WEIRD but interesting take on womanhood and motherhood. Though I'm not a dog/human hybrid, I found myself relating so much to how she sees herself in conjunction with the men in her life.
I think this book will be hard to swallow if you only think of motherhood as a “miracle”. Being a mother, even a stay-at-home mother, is difficult. And mothers are allowed to regret or feel bad about how motherhood affects their freedom and self-expression. It seems simple but mothers who aren't always happy or grateful are seriously shamed. Like ALL the time.
