Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

ARC from Netgalley and Doubleday Book for an honest review

Book Blurb:

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. She had imagined – what was it she had imagined? 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, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice..

My Review: 4 stars

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Nightbitch was one of the most unusual and engrossing reads I’ve read/listened to in a while. The premise, a mother who believes she is turning into a dog was like no other book I’ve read before. The cover and title sold me even before I started.

This book is an allegory to womanhood and motherhood. Its underlying tone is about what women give up and give to regarding the remarkable act of creating and caretaking of another human. The changes that happen to the body, the mind and the taxing tiredness turns the mother into someone she doesn’t recognize. This theme continues as the story touches on the privledge that comes with being able to stay at home with your baby vs. the need/want to continue to work.

There’s a sense of fantasy and magic to this story as the mother, who remains nameless, is obsessed with her possible transformation to a dog. With her husband gone most weeks for work, she is drowned in alone time with her son, leading to interesting and unusal play that would certainly be judged, to the naked eye, as whacko.

Folks with a strong feminist POV will find a lot to chew on as they read this book. It is odd, yest strangely addicting. Many have compared this to Kafka, which I can’t subscribe to, as I’ve never read Kafka. I do believe many women will feel heard after reading this.

Quotes I liked:

In such moments, she could almost touch her loneliness, as if it were her second child.”

“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.”