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Rachel Yoder
Rachel Yoder is the author of the novel Nightbitch, which looks at the intense and surreal side of early motherhood. She is a founding editor of the literary journal Draft and lives in Iowa.
Nightbitch
Synopsis
An unnamed woman has traded her career as an artist to stay home with her toddler son while her husband travels for work all week. Isolated, exhausted, and simmering with a rage she can barely name, she begins to notice changes: a new patch of coarse hair at the back of her neck, a sharpened set of teeth, an appetite for raw meat, a bump at the base of her spine. She becomes convinced — with something between horror and exhilaration — that she is turning into a dog.
Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch is a feral, darkly funny novel of maternal fury and transformation. As the narrator gives in to her animal instincts, she finds a strange, primal power in them, even as she hides the truth from her oblivious husband and clings to a mysterious book, A Field Guide to Magical Women. Around her, a circle of relentlessly cheerful "mommies" running a multilevel-marketing scheme may be stranger than they appear.
Equal parts body horror, satire, and manifesto, Nightbitch uses its magical-realist conceit to skewer the erasures of new motherhood, the loss of creative identity, and the myth of the serene, self-sacrificing mother. It is a raw, provocative debut about reclaiming the wild.
Genres
Characters
The Mother (Nightbitch)Protagonist
An unnamed former artist and new stay-at-home mother who believes she is becoming a dog.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a film adaptation of Nightbitch?
A film adaptation directed by Marielle Heller and starring Amy Adams was released in 2024.
What inspired Rachel Yoder to write this book?
The author was inspired by her own experiences with the anger and life changes that followed becoming a mother, as well as a specific passage from the novel Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill.