on Rachel Yoder’s “Nightbitch”

The most memorable aspect of this book is not Nightbitch’s gruesome murder of the house cat, but rather Yoder’s narration; her voice is passionate, honest, and crazed with exhaustion and fury. Through Nightbitch’s stream of consciousness, the story unfurls rapidly and continuously, like a long scroll. Immediately, the reader is placed in the bathroom with Nightbitch as she shows her husband her new tail, which is both a mischievous and disturbing scene. Overall, I loved watching her wrestle with her complex feelings about motherhood while rolling around in the mud with her little boy.

My favorite part of the magical realism genre is seeing how an author integrates magical elements into the regular world. I particularly love when these elements are seamlessly combined, as if they are completely normal in the surrounding environment. Murakami and Garcia Márquez are my heroes for this reason. In Nightbitch, I felt that the blending of the normal and the extraordinary was a little forced and jerky at times, leading to a lack of clarity in the narrative. The psychological effect on the child and the presence of the husband were sources of confusion for me throughout the book.

While this book creatively unifies the worlds of Black Swan and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” I do not feel that Yoder delved into completely new depths. The heart of this book is the knotted ball of emotions Nightbitch feels towards her new identity as a mother, and I would love to see more exploration of her psychology rather than the repetitive linear narrative. However, I also feel that this repetitiveness mimicked the monotony of Nightbitch’s new life as a mother, which was a clever choice on Yoder’s part. I think this effect would have been mitigated with a pause in the narrative, or even just chapter titles. Even though Yoder’s writing is quick and full of inertia, there is not enough plot to keep the book alive for 238 pages. For that reason, I would love to see a short-story version of Nightbitch. I’m also not sure how the namelessness of the characters contributed to the overall effect of the book. I realize that these are huge changes, but perhaps some names would have made the story feel more personal.