Nightbitch

I'm still processing what I've experienced reading this novel. It's dark and angry but also funny and relatable. Yoder walks the tightrope of reeling readers in with accessible, contemporary prose and wowing with her literary allusions and tightly structured tale. I stopped reading numerous times to read passages to friends and family or to stop and think about a scene.Moms should read this book. It's filled with poignant insights and biting realities about what women are expected to give up and what's assumed that they'll sit down and take.Women should read this book. Yoder weaves in the mother's ancestral history of women who sacrifice for their families, which helps frame the novel in a larger context (It's not just a book for new moms!).Artists should read this book. It's just as much about creation in the artist sense. The mother's evolution toward rawness and impulse is the story of being an artist, whether you're a parent or not.I will say that as a stay-at-home dad I also related to the book immensely. I felt like the mother was reading my inner thoughts, my conflicting emotions about what it means to be a parent, to sacrifice for one's family. So I hope Nightbitch gets the larger audience that it deserves.It's real. It's angry, raw, funny, touching, and revealing. I can see Nightbitch sparking another women's movement, one where we finally start making strides toward gender equity at home.Yoder knows what the hell she's doing, and I hope everyone picks this book up and lets it spark a long overdue conversation about what it means to be a woman, mom, dad, parent, husband, wife, artist, human. I've bought 6 copies already and recommended it to at least 10 other people, and I hope this review convinces you that it's a must-read.

The characters don't even have names (the mother, the baby, the husband). The narrative is told in the 3rd person even though this type of story cries out for a first-person voice. I didn't feel anything for any of the characters...especially the main one. Reading this book was like eating dog food.

Irreverent in an offensive and unnecessarily grotesque manner. A wholly reprehensible diatribe against motherhood and the sacred journey of becoming and unbecoming. The writing style and perspective itself is indicative of vast potential, yet the story turns into the depths of certifiable postpartum disorder(s) and makes a vile home. Absolutely repulsed and disappointed in where this should have gone, yet arrived in nightmare instead. Worse yet- it’s not only unsettling in the most obvious and metaphorically lacking ways, but ironically anti-feminist. Whomever reviewed in relation to Kafka owes Franz an apology. The only likable character was “the boy” who will surely endure eons of therapy.

I started reading this and got through the first part but lost interest… decided to try again but this time following along with the audiobook and that made the read much easier and way faster. I enjoyed all the topics that were touched on. Motherhood and how it can consume you until thats literally all that you are. Mother’s can be forced to leave behind their passions and dreams. It also touched on Husbands/fathers lack of participation in raising children. It also touches on having to deal with the husband/father being the breadwinner which is why they are not able to participate much.. it touches on isolation, lack of friends, feelings of “wasted” time, “wasted” youth.Anyway, I thought it was a good book. Im not much of an artsy person, but you dont need to be when reading this book.. only at the VERY end, which if i didnt have the audiobook, I probably would have skipped. Like others mentioned towards the end, it is hard to tell what was real and what was not..Im not a mother and do not want kids and the majority of this book has definitely validated that decision. However, although im not a mother, I still was able to understand the struggles and to feel the place that our main character was coming from. I was so exhausted for her reading this lol.Anyone who minimizes or dismisses mothers and motherhood and anyone who doesn’t appreciate them enough should read this book.

It’s too early in the year to have read such a mediocre book. Surprise! It’s an allegory for a white yuppie artist mother who want to “be heard”. Aren’t white yuppie moms the only moms who are heard? Don’t they already dominate the media landscape? Perhaps clocking in as a close second to stoic white men who call it as they see it (something the generic husband character in this novel excels at), white women already dominate feminism. We don’t need any more of this. This is a poorly written, trope filled mess with wholly empty characters. Reviews called this book “weird”, which I guess is true if you spend the majority of your time watching comedies on ABC, you vanilla Starbucks cup of a human. Others referred to this book as “kafkaesque”, which I guess is true if the closet you ever came to reading Kafka was to lie to your wine drinking book club about having read Kafka and then proceed to talk about last nights episode of Dancing with the Stars. I honestly don’t understand how this below base meandering was even published. I’m not even convinced it would have made a decent short story, let alone the novel it was allowed to be. Carmen Maria Machado (who is a competent author) provides a blurb for this and was the sole reason why I read it, but I now know a blurb can’t carry a novel. Seriously, stop saying this book is “weird”, it is terrestrial and surface as all get out.