Mary: Well, pals, do we have a doozy for you today. Emily and I are here to talk about Nightbitch, the new novel by Rachel Yoder. Nightbitch follows an unnamed mother as she slowly descends into madness (or is it madness?). As she comes to terms with what it means to be a mother, Nightbitch grapples with her increasingly doglike nature, her isolation from others, and her growing urges to embrace her animalistic nature.
I’m trying to think back on why we picked this book to talk about. I know we both wanted to read it because, I mean, that title. The title is so catchy and the cover is jarring in the best way. This is the type of book that grabs me with its looks, and it kind of invoked that favorite childhood feeling of wandering around a bookstore and just letting the best cover win.
Emily: Yeah, I think we just wanted to read it because we wanted to read it, and committing to write a blog post about it gave us a deadline. It ain’t that deep, folks.
Mary: All that being said, I’m not sure how I feel about this book, even after I read it and rated it. I didn’t dislike the novel, per se, but some things definitely turned me off. Maybe we should start with the positives and move on to the negatives?
Emily: Yeah, that sounds fine to me. Because clearly there’s one big negative that happens closer to the end of the book that we’ll have to discuss. So obviously spoilers for Nightbitch to follow. You’ve been warned.
Mary: Something that’s interesting in Nightbitch to me is the loss of identity after having kids. I’m not a mother, but I’ve seen this happen with other people I know, just anecdotally. I see people my age who I went to school with have kids and just become engulfed by Mommy Culture. Suddenly, they don’t have any time for anything other than their child, and things just kind of go on from there. It’s always been difficult for me to understand, both as someone without children and with a pretty strong sense of identity in things I love (like reading, video games, crafts, etc.). I think that a major strength of Nightbitch is that I finally got that change and how it happens for some women. Nightbitch doesn’t want to change. In fact, she desperately wants to hang on to her life as an artist, but she can’t because she and her husband decided she needed to provide 24/7 childcare while he worked his more lucrative job.
Nightbitch after her husband says her job’s not hard.
Emily: Yeah, so I mentioned this on the podcast, but I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of mommy horror/weird fiction lately. For instance, Kelli and I just reviewed The Upstairs House for the blog a few weeks ago. And I, like you, am not a mother, but I also find this topic interesting. Probably because I have no interest in being a mother. I think women are constantly pressured into motherhood and told that motherhood is a part of who we’re supposed to be and something we’re just supposed to grow into doing. Books like this do a good job of illustrating that, no, motherhood isn’t just a natural part of life. It can feel very unnatural, actually. And if we want to get into horror, specifically body horror, I can’t think of anything more horrific than growing something inside of you, popping it out, and then being forced to care for it. Like, that’s pretty weird when you stop and think about it. So yeah, I find the whole concept fascinating not because it’s something I want to do one day, but rather because the whole thing seems like real-life body horror.
Mary: I think that some people are surprised by horror that delves into motherhood because a lot of the time women don’t talk about the truly terrifying parts of it. Motherhood (like anything having to do with bodies) is gross and weird and beautiful and terrifying and awe-inspiring. It’s complicated.
Nightbitch does a great job of really illustrating how motherhood can be monstrous, which is something we see in children’s lit all the time. The Other Mother in Coraline, every evil stepmother in history–it’s all part of how motherhood is complicated and dark and potentially life-ruining for some people.
Emily: Yeah, and I can definitely see why it would be an identity crisis, as it is for Nightbitch in this novel. At the beginning of the novel, she’s just referred to as “the mother,” right? And then after she has this transformation she becomes Nightbitch. And there was this other version of her we never really get to see, the woman she was before she was a mother. When she was an artist, and that was sort of her whole identity. We also have this issue of the absent father figure. Like, okay, he’s there, but he’s also not there. He seems totally oblivious to what’s going on with Nightbitch. I think these books usually have a father who is, like, not helping AT ALL. And this is a problem.
Mary: Yes! Before she gets the name Nightbitch, she just goes by the mother. It’s as if it’s not really important who she is or what she wants out of life after she’s had a child. Because, the book seems to be saying, once you have a child everything has to be about that child. You’re not even a person anymore.
WOOF the dad is awful, but he’s awful in a way I think a lot of women feel cool with, you know? He’s not mean, he’s just kind of uninvolved in childcare because, you know, that’s his wife’s job. He says he’s tired when he gets home from work, and he has to go on long business trips out of town, that’s not his fault, right? Mustn’t it be a dream to just chill with your kid every day? The husband, like a lot of people IRL, doesn’t think that childcare IS work, so he doesn’t feel particularly inclined to help out, since he’s the breadwinner. The truth is that there’s so much emotional and physical labor involved in childcare. That’s why daycare costs big bucks, folks.
Emily: Oh 100%.
Mary: I think this was one of the scariest things in the novel to me, the sheer alone-ness of the mother because her husband couldn’t be bothered to help her when he could.
Emily: Yes, and it’s scary because I see SO MANY WOMEN go through this.
Mary: A negative we have to talk about is that brutal cat death. If you’re at all a cat lover or fan of animals in general, this scene is going to shake you. I definitely had a hard time finishing the novel after Nightbitch kills her pet cat, and I definitely didn’t sympathize with her after that.
Emily: I had the same experience. The cat scene was really brutal and graphic, and even though it’s something that technically moves the plot forward, it didn’t feel necessary. Like I felt like a violence had been done against me. And maybe that means it was effective, but I also hated it. But I guess that’s a question we should ask ourselves. What was the purpose, and was it effective?
Mary: We’ve talked about this before, but neither of us are afraid to read dark material, or violent stuff. I agree though that after reading that scene I felt like something personal happened to me. I kept hugging my cats and telling them how good they were. It just felt so...unnecessary? Part of it is that I love cats, but another part of it is that Nightbitch is SO mean to this cat throughout the entire novel. It feels like the cat’s death is inevitable, because on the first page it appears, she calls it “stupid.” I really hate people who mistreat their pets for any reason. I just kept thinking that there’s someone out there who would love to take in this fictional cat and love it. The plot could have progressed in another, equally violent way. What if Nightbitch bit someone on the street? That would be violent, horrifying, and something a wild dog would do. And a cat wouldn’t have had to die.
The cat plotting its revenge from Cat Heaven.
Emily: I totally agree. I think there are plenty ways to be violent and shocking and create a reaction in your readers without, you know, killing a cat.
Mary: Shifting gears a little bit, what even are we supposed to make of the end of the novel? Does she turn her torturous journey of motherhood into a one-woman show? Are the MLM gals actually dogs? I feel like there were so many loose ends that didn’t quite get wound up for me. Look, I love an ambiguous, artsy ending as much as anyone, and I’ve read my share of them, but this just seemed like an abrupt stop that didn’t fully connect to me.
Emily: Yeah, I have to say I was a little disappointed because the MLM part was a big reason I picked up this book. I think the whole MLM mom phenomenon is so fascinating and so horrifying. And it was so underused in this book. She doesn’t even go to a meeting until the very end, and yeah then we have this weird performance art thing that’s afterwards kind of addressed as if none of it was real? I was not super pleased with this ending.
Mary: Yes, absolutely. MLMs prey on moms, and especially stay-at-home moms, and I was HYPED for this novel to portray them as some sort of evil secret society. But like you said, that’s not what happened.
I love an ambiguous ending, and I’m fine with not knowing all the details, but this one just really disappointed me in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. I couldn’t tell if it was real or not, or what we were supposed to get out of it. That people enjoy horrifying art? Enjoy watching others’ bad experiences? I don’t know. It just didn’t do it for me. Then again, by this point in the book I felt so disappointed that the MLM plotline wasn’t amounting to anything, and that a cat had viscerally died...the ending would have needed to be excellent to get me back on board. I ended up rating this one a 3 on Goodreads, but that was extremely generous. I will say that I enjoyed the writing style, the pacing of it, even if some of the plot didn’t come together for me. What did you rate it?
Emily: I also rated it a 3. I don’t know that this was an enjoyable read for me, but I did have a reaction to it, as I’ve mentioned. And I feel like this is definitely an author I would try again, just based off of this book. So I feel like that warrants a 3.
I was about to ask what was next, but this isn’t like a series we’re doing. This is just a bonus book, sort of like when we did Survive the Night last month. So will we do this again? Maybe, but we’re not committing to anything. It’s been fun though!
Mary: It’s definitely been fun!
Here is a perfect kitten because we love cats and we love our readers.