I had to read this right away. I was not disappointed. It made me appreciate again that motherhood is not for me but it was funny and realistic despite its fantastical premise—Midwestern mom or weredog? I thought the liberal arts/art scene parts were very realistic. I’m always interested in stories of women more like ones I know than the soccer mom type that is in so many other books.

A fascinating, kaleidoscopically rich take on early motherhood. However fantastic the happenings in the novel I never doubted for a moment the underlying truth of the protagonist's experience. Sure, this new mother at the heart of the story starts turning into a dog, literally, on the novel's first pages, but even so, as I read along, I kept thinking: 'yes, that's exactly the way it is.'

Yoder taps into a feeling deeper than metaphor in describing the helplessness, ennui, stress, erasure, and overwhelming fatigue of caring for a young child. She paints the mother's reactions to her clueless-helpful husband perfectly--the way he's always eager to step in with advice, and yet always wrong in his advice. I loved the veracity of the child, too, who behaves as children that age do: as small dictators.

The unnamed Everymother at the heart of the story is simultaneously helpless to change her fate, and completely empowered to do just that--if only she reaches out and claims her power. The story is told from a point of view very deep inside the mother's head: her reactions, her experiences, her moods, her decisions. It felt intimate and true for the way it describes motherhood as a disruptive metamorphosis.

A good companion novel to this read would be the wonderful CARMEN DOG by Carol Emshwiller (1990) a book in which all women begin to transmogrify in beastly ways. And who would blame them.