Book 2: Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

 The first book club book of the year! And for once, I have actually finished the book an entire day before our meeting, rather than twenty minutes before it begins. Progress! 

I have...mixed feelings about this book? Something? Like, it is definitely a book where I spent most of it feeling like I am much too queer for this story, but it's not just that. This is a book about a woman, who is only ever named "the mother," who is a stay-at-home mom for her 2 year old son while her husband ("husband") travels for the entire week most weeks, and she gave up her art career because it was impossible to manage the hours and the pumping and the everything with caring for her son, and of course her husband couldn't give up his job, because his job made the money, and so now she's living this trapped life while attempting to convince herself that if she just chooses this life, and chooses happiness and all that, it will all be okay. 

And then she starts to transform into a dog, and nightbitch is born. 

She finds a book written by an academic that explores women who transform into animals essentially across multiple cultures, which becomes something of a guidebook for her, and there's quite a lot of animal harm and death, and she navigates who she is as nightbitch while also getting to know the mommies of her town who are led by one of a dozen Jens, who of course is in a MLM for herbs, and there's a lot here and I get the point and I get the satire and I am just not sure I got much out of it being a whole book. I kept waiting for it to land more, or arrive someplace that would really hit me, and instead I kept feeling like, "well yes, of course she's an animal inside who's been denied her true self, that's the comp cishet game, also her husband was never good," and it is possible I am too....something for this book. I am unmarried, and I don't have children, and maybe I need to be or have one or both of those things in order to viscerally feel the truth of this book, or something. It is magical realism, and it is horror, but frankly I felt it could have leaned in a lot more to the horror of it all. 

Grade: B