Nightbitch

Stylist’s summer cult breakout

By: Rachel Yoder

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Brought to you by Penguin.

NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING AMY ADAMS

Are you looking for a book with bite?

One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else...

At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.

Instead, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...

Written as a howl against biology, history and the patriarchy, Nightbitch uproariously explores how traditional structures of power and gender continue to shape our experiences of mothering. Outrageously enjoyable, deeply clever and joyfully subversive, it is a book about finding the freedom to love and live as we want and need, whatever form this takes.

'OUTRAGEOUS, SMART, FUN' Bonnie Garmus, Sunday Times bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry

'FUNNY AND UNNERVING AS HELL' Jenny Offill

'The spiritual successor to Angela Carter' Evening Standard

©2021 Rachel Yoder (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

Yoder's voice is precise and funny, pitch-perfect... This is a terrifically alive and imaginative tale... an important contribution to the engagement with motherhood that rightly dominates contemporary feminism. (Lara Feigel)

A deliciously untamed satire on mothering and collapsed ambition... Yoder's descriptions of wild self-release are thrilling. (Catherine Taylor)

Yoder's commentary on the assorted neuroses of modern womanhood is graceful and coolly incisive... She infuses new life into the cold, furry flesh of the monstrous femme. (AK Blakemore)

deliciously bizarre

Suspend belief and delve into this tale of magic, mysticism and the hidden monster inside all women.

Disappointing

I can tell the author of this novel really, desperately wanted to be interesting and shocking with this book, but I am sad to say it was neither of those things. I ended up listening on 2 times speed because I was so bored, which from this premise you'd hope wouldn't happen. It actually wasn't weird enough for me. The reader doing the kids' voice made my stomach turn every time, it made me truly hate him, which I know was also the authors fault. Overall I was left with the impression that this would have made a much, much better short story/novella.