Nightbitch is the first novel by Rachel Yoder.
Finished on: 27.7.2025

Content Note: animal death

Plot:
The Mother feels trapped. Having left her job in an art gallery behind to take care of her young son, her husband traveling for work a lot, there is nothing for her but boredom and confinement. She loves her son, but it seems that she can’t adjust to this life, at least not like the other mothers around her. Constantly dirty and tired, her creativity stifled, she finds some freedom when she starts to turn into a dog. Or does she?

Nightbitch is a fantastic novel that made me want to cry out in agreement several times. It is one of the best depictions of modern motherhood I have come across, and as a mother myself, I recognized a lot. Really good stuff.

Looking at it on a surface level, Nightbitch sounds a lot like Bitch. But apart from “woman turns into dog”, they are really not much alike. From the plot description of this book, I expected it to be about how the mother shuns social expectations and obligations by turning into an animal or turning to her animalistic side. And while the novel does give us that, I wouldn’t say that this is the core of what it is trying to do. Instead it is much more about the need to be able to express yourself, creatively. Yes, even mothers.

The book does remain a little vague, I thought, as to what exactly was happening. You could conceivably read it as not magical at all. There is just one moment, I think, that would defy this reading. Personally, I think it is more fun anyway to take it at face value. Either way, the book takes you for a ride.

And that ride is littered with great observations of what it means to be a mother in the 2020s. The expectation to have it all, do it all, and enjoy it. To both be fulfilled entirely by motherhood, but also to work and manage everything. I assume that Yoder is a mother herself, because her descriptions of the Mother’s tiredness and exhaustion just feels so lived in. (If Yoder never had that herself, hats off for imagining it so very accurately.) Even if you are a happy stay-at-home mom, I think those descriptions will hit home for you.

What I also loved was that the book never questions the Mother’s love for her son. Despite all of her own struggles, she is a great mother to him and she never blames him for the impossibilities of motherhood. (Sidenote: he very much reads as autistic to me, but that is never a point the book even thinks to raise.) In fact, the more the Mother finds herself and her way of expressing herself again, the easier and more filled with fun her time with him becomes, too.

There is a subplot of the Mother discovering an ethnological book about magical women around the world. While I liked the descriptions of those magical creatures, the ensuing letters from the Mother to the author didn’t add much to the book for me. But I also didn’t mind them. I just wasn’t that interested. The thing with the cat – that I saw coming from very far off – was definitely tough to take. I did mind that.

In any case, I am really looking forward to diving into the film adaptation of this one now. I hope it is as biting (no pun intended) and insightful as the novel.

Summarizing: an excellent read.