Rachel Yoder

The bite of satire is directed instead into the realm of mystic idealized communion. Nightbitch asks readers to explore the most natural (the most human and animal) parts of femininized bodies.

There is violence inherent in being feminine that I delight in seeing depicted. The development of an adult body is itself a painful and revealing act. The book dwells on what it means to be in a body capable of bringing forth new life only to be penalized for that very reason.

During most evenings I've spent with women friends, there comes a point when discussion turns to the limitations of contemporary women. Being told it is possible to have everything has not been liberating because it remains untrue.

While Nightbitch (whose eponymous self-identification reminded me of how much I love Fleabag-- show and the character) is a privileged woman aware of her privilege, she resents it. She benefits from being financially able to stay at home and focus on childcare, but her awareness of how convenience and domestic roles trap her forces her to battle her anger in a specific, limited way. She's careful not to take anything for granted, which means she feels guilty for not doing more with her education and feels like she's constantly letting down her young son.

This book is clearly not for everyone, with style, pacing, and logic that readers either hate or love. Still, I highly recommend it for the women I know used to feeling an itching all over in the middle of the night, feeling trapped by the small area they're sharing with others but unable to go outside because it is Dark and they are Woman.… (mehr)

This is an acquired taste, but I ate it up all the same. A woman who never saw herself as a mother was indeed that now and the process was intricate and often painful. She surmised her process as an artful change with elements of raw and animalistic processes. Did I identify with any of it? Yes, as I define myself as a feral housewife. Maybe there is a unique breed of women, myself included, who see themselves vastly different from what we believe to be the mass.
Don't pick this up if you are after gore and suspenseful mystery. Pick it up with an open mind and a willingness to accept a very different approach to self evolving pains and acceptance.… (mehr)

Went into this one not knowing what to expect, since most of the werewolf-themed books I've read have been in the tropey, young-adult category. But this book blew me away. I might not be a mother, but the main character's experiences with motherhood were so realistic and gut-wrenching, reminding me of my own mother who also gave up her dreams and was never the same as a result.

MM/Nightbitch, thankfully, manages to pull herself out of this pit of despair, not without great personal obstacles - from trying to balance work with child-rearing, to struggling as a stay-at-home mom, to finally realizing and asserting her self-worth. The way she rediscovered both her human and animal natures, the way they intersected within the complexity of a woman and mother, and the way she made peace with this complexity, had me cheering and emotional at the end. No, she's not a perfect character by any stretch, but who of us is, really? She's a startling metaphor for what happens when (1) we allow ourselves to silently chafe too long under the often insensitive constraints of society, and (2) the beauty and power that can result when we come to terms with who we are. And that's a message I didn't know I needed to hear.… (mehr)