Published in 2021
256 pages
8 hours and 52 minutes
Rachel Yoder is the author of Nightbitch, her debut novel. Selected as an Indie Next Pick in August 2021, Nightbitch has gone on to be named a best book of the year by Esquire and Vulture and recognized as a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and shortlist for the McKitterick Prize. To date, Nightbitch has been translated into 13 languages. A film adaptation produced by Annapurna, directed by Marielle Heller, and starring Amy Adams will be released in 2023.
Rachel is a graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program and also holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona. With Mark Polanzak, she is a founding editor of draft: the journal of process.
What is this book about?
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. She had imagined – what was it she had imagined? 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, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice…
With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.
