Nightbitch

during her nightly examination in the bathroom. Every night, when her husband was gone and their son was happily playing with trains in his pajamas, she stood at the mirror and pulled her lips back from her teeth, turned her head from side to side, then tilted her head back and looked at her teeth from that bottom-up angle, searched the Internet on her phone for pictures of canines to which she might compare her own, tapped her teeth with her fingernails, told herself she was being silly, then searched humans with dog teeth on her phone, searched do humans and dogs share a common ancestor, searched human animal hybrid and recessive animal genes in humans and research human animal genes legacy, searched werewolves, searched real werewolves in history, searched (somewhat inexplicably) witches, searched (somewhat relatedly) hysteria 19th century, and then, since she wanted to, searched rest cures and The Yellow Wallpaper, and she reread The Yellow Wallpaper, which she had once read in college, then stared blankly for a while at nothing in particular while sitting on the toilet, then stopped searching altogether.
Touch it, she insisted, pointing to her tooth. Her husband reached out and prodded the tip of her canine with his pointer finger.
Ow! he said, pulling his hand back and cradling it close to his body. Just kidding, he said as he held up an unscathed finger and waggled it at her face.
 Your tooth looks the same to me. You always think something s wrong with you, he said pleasantly.
Her husband was an engineer. He specialized in quality control. What precisely this meant, the mother was not entirely sure. So he went around and looked at machines to make sure they were maximizing efficiency? Adjusted systems to keep them humming along at higher frequencies? Read output reports and made suggestions toward improvement? Sure. Whatever.
What she did know was that he

The Seattle Times

"Rather than childbirth twisted into hideous shapes by the male artistic eye, in this book art crawls out of motherhood with an exhausted, sweating, blood-strewn, but joyous howl. . . Creativity and motherhood don t need to be at each other s throats, like vampires or zombies. In Nightbitch they feed in the same night on the same wild prey."
The Boston Globe

"Yoder explores familiar themes through an inventive conceit, literalizing the surrealness of motherhood with dark humor and a keen sense of irony."
The New York Times Book Review

"This book is part feminist indictment of the impossible state America s mothers find themselves in, and part meditation on maternal fulfillment and rage. It s also entirely bonkers and entirely relatable, perfectly capturing that impetus toward destruction you feel after everything else has been drained from you."
Romper

"Wildly (literally) imaginative plot aside, Yoder s debut exposes her as a tremendous writer. She seamlessly blends dark comedy with astute observations on the state of modern motherhood and feminism in general that will make the reader feel both seen and enraged."
PureWow

"Yoder s guttural and luminous debut blends absurdism, humor, and myth to lay bare the feral, violent realities underlying a new mother s existence Bursting with fury, loneliness, and vulgarity, Yoder s narrative revels in its deconstruction of the social script women and mothers are taught to follow, painstakingly reading between the lines to expose the cruel and downright ludicrous ways in which women are denied their personhood. An electric work by an ingenious new voice, this is one to devour.
Publishers Weekly *starred review*

A darkly funny, often insightful dive into the competitive relationship and mutually generative potential between art and motherhood and the animalism underlying procreation and child-rearing. . . A battle hymn as novel about sinking your teeth into the available options for self-determination and ripping them to shreds.
Kirkus Reviews

...A bold book, funny and bizarre and utterly without comparison It takes an unmatched talent to orchestrate such an unorthodox concept. Thankfully, Rachel Yoder pulls it off with aplomb."
Elle

"Rachel Yoder s much-hyped debut about contemporary motherhood joins a long literary tradition of women transforming and metamorphosing inside the pressure cooker of domesticity. If you re a fan of Angela Carter, Miranda July or Charlotte Perkins Gilman, you won t want to miss this."
Refinery29

"Wild and strangely hopeful, Nightbitch s success lies in Yoder s controlled style and its leap just beyond reality. If motherhood is an otherworldly state, why confine a story about it to the strictures of the real world?"
Vulture

"Electric"
Entertainment Weekly

"Filled with wickedly smart observations and hilarious and heartbreaking moments."
Business insider

I could not love a novel more than Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch. It's such a uniquely brilliant book, one that looks at the intersection of motherhood and art, the terror of 'a thousand artless afternoons'. It is so wonderfully observant, so precise, and yet manages to expand and expand upon those initial concerns, turning magical, dark, and funny."
Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here