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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
First book of my Hot Girl Summer Reading List and I have mixed feelings.
I enjoyed this book but also found it very weird and had a hard time getting into it.
As someone who has chosen not to have children, I am not the target audience for this book and it shows because ALL of the MOANING about motherhood just annoyed the fuck out of me. It wasn't relatable or groundbreaking. The women in this book are all privileged enough to have remained childless if they wanted to. Our unnamed main character, "the mother" or "Nightbitch," straight up says at one point that she never saw a child in her future. Ok... So then why did you get pregnant?
I am getting very crochety in my old age because it felt like absolutely none of these women ever had a critical thought about motherhood or families or marriage. No one made you get married to the man who travels for work every single week. No one made you get pregnant and give birth to a child with that man. You just did what is considered "normal" or "expected" without a second thought. And for an Artist (which Nightbitch is, as she tells us over and over), I find that surprising!
Bizarre compulsory breeding aside, I did enjoy the weirdness of this book and Nightbitch's spiral into complete insanity. There were some really beautiful sentences and thoughts about being a woman In Modern Times and how we socialize men versus women. And honestly I just love a weird woman protagonist. Hot Girl Summer let's gooo.
I enjoyed this book but also found it very weird and had a hard time getting into it.
As someone who has chosen not to have children, I am not the target audience for this book and it shows because ALL of the MOANING about motherhood just annoyed the fuck out of me. It wasn't relatable or groundbreaking. The women in this book are all privileged enough to have remained childless if they wanted to. Our unnamed main character, "the mother" or "Nightbitch," straight up says at one point that she never saw a child in her future. Ok... So then why did you get pregnant?
I am getting very crochety in my old age because it felt like absolutely none of these women ever had a critical thought about motherhood or families or marriage. No one made you get married to the man who travels for work every single week. No one made you get pregnant and give birth to a child with that man. You just did what is considered "normal" or "expected" without a second thought. And for an Artist (which Nightbitch is, as she tells us over and over), I find that surprising!
Bizarre compulsory breeding aside, I did enjoy the weirdness of this book and Nightbitch's spiral into complete insanity. There were some really beautiful sentences and thoughts about being a woman In Modern Times and how we socialize men versus women. And honestly I just love a weird woman protagonist. Hot Girl Summer let's gooo.
honestly a book full of potential that ended up falling flat in the end, still a fun read tho!
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Extremely smart, with strong threads throughout. Very well written and tied up. Super weird while being dissectable and stimulating, my favorite kind of art.
YUM this was so delicious to read. thanks el for reading it aloud even tho it took months to read like 36 pages. haha its funny because then it took me three days to read the rest by myself. i enjoyed the thinking this book was doing even tho it made me scared of motherhood. i loved where it was going near the end with the crazy dog studio in her house and was excited for it to get into LIFE as art but then i didnt like the ending where she did actually end up doing that performance piece.
reminds me of a quote from a podcast i was listening to the other day abt this woman who wanted to have a baby but then her friends were like no, your art is your baby, and you should treat it with the same gravity & care
reminds me of a quote from a podcast i was listening to the other day abt this woman who wanted to have a baby but then her friends were like no, your art is your baby, and you should treat it with the same gravity & care
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
At first I really loved this book as I felt So fucking understood/heard/validated/seen/acknowledged. But then this book was so uncannily familiar to my life and my thoughts (minus the animal stuff lol) that it was causing me some serious existential dread. Goddamn this book cut me to the core!!! It truly felt sometimes like someone hijacked my brain and wrote a book about it. What the fuck. It was amazing and terrifying simultaneously. It definitely succeeds at depicting the life of a feminist stay-at-home mom. It is perfectly written.
I dinged a star solely for personal reasons of putting the book down and avoiding it sometimes because it was fucking with my brain and hitting too close to home and giving me nightmares. It was exquisitely grotesque and a total mindfuck.
I dinged a star solely for personal reasons of putting the book down and avoiding it sometimes because it was fucking with my brain and hitting too close to home and giving me nightmares. It was exquisitely grotesque and a total mindfuck.
Really three and a half stars. A god damn WEIRD book, from start to finish, but I could not put it down. Intrigued to see how this translates on screen when they make the movie, and definitely excited to see Amy Adams play such a decidedly unhinged character.