Often these days I find myself wondering how on earth I am going to put into words the feelings a book has provoked within me. Sometimes it seems like a mountain to climb and this was definitely the case with Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t struggle to read Nightbitch; on the contrary I gulped it down in big messy mouthfuls. It was like some dark delicious treat that I kept finding waiting for me in the cracks of an insanely busy and stressful week. It was the kind of book I wanted to read non stop but knew it would be all the better for savouring. In all honesty I failed with the slow savouring part; I was just too greedy and impatient. Maybe that will come on the reread; because there will be a reread. This book is too deep, too delicious, too beautifully complex for anyone to take in first go.
This is the story of a mother, a mother never identified by her name, who is exhausted, lost in the forest that we know as motherhood. A women who feels she has lost her identity. Having been a successful artist she has paused her career to look after her young son. Believing she would be fulfilled by this she finds herself feeling bored, unseen and diminished. She still loves her son but motherhood alone is simply not enough. And admitting that makes her feel like she has failed. Admitting that makes her feel alone.
That premise right there ‘motherhood alone is not enough’ is at the centre of what this story is about. That is the place of honesty from which this story grows. It is something that is so true for many many women but it is still taboo, an often unspoken truth even amongst women themselves. There are no taboos in Nightbitch; Rachel Yoder smashes them one by one.
The mother’s discontentment takes on its own physical manifestation. The mother gradually begins to believe that she is turning into a dog. What begins as a strange patch it hair and possible extended canines, turns into wild changes of behaviour and a whole new way of looking at the world.
The process of change is symbolic of a mother rediscovering herself, of finding space for what she needs in the tiny slots of time that parenting affords us. It is about the way The Mother transforms to Nightbitch, about the risks and chances she takes. It is about how she finds her pack; others who are feeling the same and are willing to join her on the path to rediscovery and freedom.
This is a book filled with emotion. It is filled with heart, soul and truth. It makes you laugh, cry, scream and rage, but also it makes mothers feel seen. It is the book that every women struggling out of the depths of cartoons, playdough and sleepless needs to read.
I flipping loved it!
Rachel x
Book Bound 