It’s hard to sum up my thoughts about Yesteryear when, over a week after finishing it, I’m still mulling it over - but maybe the fact that I haven’t been able to get it out of my head tells you everything you need to know. Based on the book’s synopsis, I was expecting a fairly lighthearted account of a trad wife influencer who ends up getting her just deserts, where the real treasure is the feminism we learn along the way. In reality, there’s something much deeper (and at times much darker) to Yesteryear.

One of the most compelling parts of the book is its narrator, Natalie. She seems to perfectly embody the stereotype of an evangelical Christian influencer, but the more we learn about her, the more we can see the cracks under the surface. Her narrative voice vacillates between the usual incendiary rhetoric you’d expect and these moments of lucidity where you suspect she may understand the contradictions of her traditional lifestyle and “family values.” She’s a complicated character who invokes complicated feelings. As readers, our relationship with Natalie is like a mirror image of how many of us interact with theses types of women online - we may hate them, but at the same time, it’s so hard to look away.

The final twist is controversial, but it’s another aspect of the book that I thought was executed really well and I did not see it coming at all. My only gripe with it as that, as others have mentioned, it wasn’t fully clear to me what message the author was trying to convey. It’s like she got so close to making a statement with the book but couldn’t quite get there. Maybe the ambiguity is the point and it’s up to the readers to decide what to take from it, but ultimately this did undermine the book somewhat for me.

Overall though I thought this was a really gripping story that’s especially poignant in these times where it can be difficult to separate online performance from real life, and where many of us may feel like our own sense of agency is in peril.

This book had some of the makings of a truly great novel, but I think it fell short on a few fronts. Oftentimes, the things it did well in some ways were the same things it struggled with in other ways. Attention to detail is a persistent example—on one side of that coin were parallels and breadcrumbs planted so subtly that looking for them felt like a scavenger hunt, and on the other side we get glaring errors in basic facts (like how CPS works or what sewing needles are for).

The pacing was also a mixed bag. Yesteryear was wildly propulsive; it was one of those rare books that I couldn’t put down (I actually added half a star to my rating for momentum because I read it in a single day). But the tempo of the book was also pretty egregiously uneven. Pacing issues don’t usually bother me, but they’re hard not to acknowledge here. The 1855 plot takes up so few pages relative to the rest of the story that it almost seemed like the author couldn’t think of enough content to flesh it out. It might’ve helped if the book’s marketing hadn’t relied so heavily on the 1855 element, but even then I think more could’ve been done with it, both plot-wise and thematically.

I think the biggest letdown, though, was in the thematic material, although it’s difficult to pinpoint why. I don't want to gloss over the themes that were brilliantly handled—Natalie really shone as a character study; she was a perfect conduit for exploring how heavily patriarchy depends on women who perpetuate the subjugation of other women. The victim/perpetrator cycle, and the rage and emptiness it engenders, were immaculately illustrated in the women of Natalie’s family. We also get gems of bonus themes, like a solid depiction of how extreme and conspiracy-minded positions worm their way into politics (as in social media) less through true belief and more through calculated co-optation for the sake of voter engagement.

That said, there was overall a sense of insufficiency in some of the thematic handling—it went almost far enough; it almost made a statement; I could almost see the vision. Because the thematic shortcomings are so hard to pin down, I was left feeling vaguely unsatisfied about what this book was trying to say. I can’t say for sure why some of the themes seemed to stop short of a point, but I did something I rarely have the energy to do and went looking for answers outside of the text, so I have some ideas.

I don’t usually go for author’s intent as part of literary analysis, but I do think context can give us new ideas for analysis. To that end, I’ve found two tidbits about this book to be informative:

The first is that, according to the Acknowledgements, this book was optioned for film before it was even finished. Anne Hathaway, who bought the film rights, apparently had a hand in helping Burke develop the main character. Nothing is said about how other film industry elements might’ve influenced the development of the book, but even Hathaway’s contributions make me wonder what the book could’ve looked like without that early interference. I wish we could know whether changes might’ve been made for commercial appeal or ease of adaptation, and I wish even more that we could see Burke’s original vision for the book.

The second tidbit is how the author positions herself politically. She identified as Republican prior to 2015 (I’m sure she’s not alone in seeing that year as a final straw), and in 🔗 this interview about Yesteryear, she says of her current views, “I don’t feel myself at opposition with conservatism. I feel myself at opposition with the status quo of America, and a lot of that is about liberalism as well. The Democrat vibe was ‘lean in; you can do it all’… and we now know that’s fundamentally bullshit.” I certainly wouldn’t criticize anyone for dissatisfaction with 2010s girlboss feminism, but it seems to me that Burke is presenting herself as a centrist in the marketing for this book. Maybe someone who’s familiar with Burke’s podcast would know enough to come to a different conclusion, but I do think a critique of rigid gender roles finds new complications when it comes from a perspective that doesn’t reject conservatism.

Those two bits of background did lead me to new interpretations of the text (particularly about the book’s portrayal of feminism), but there’s enough cause to squint at the themes even without them.

All that said, I wouldn’t recommend skipping this book if you’re interested (outside of content warning reasons). It’s addictive and compelling, it has sparks of greatness, and there’s so much in it to think and talk about. It really lends itself to a deep dive. I’ve had a lot of fun in the forum, and I’m excited to see what it looks like a few months from now!