Spellbook Saturday: Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Trust me when I say that I really wanted to like this week’s #spellbooksaturday, and so it is with a heavy heart that I share a critical review for…

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible. A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.

[source: bookshop.org]

I learned of Burke’s debut reading her interview on In Pursuit of Clean Countertops, and it sounded so promising: a timely satire with a sprinkling of schadenfreude and a feminist critique of tradwife culture? Yes please! And while those elements are present in the most simplistic of ways, I was quite disappointed. Burke is a competent writer, but she gave Natalie so little cohesion that I struggled to believe her— it was not just that she was an unreliable narrator, but that she lacked true interiority. Natalie’s religious beliefs are apparently whatever Burke needs her to believe in that moment to move the story forward— I never felt that she was devout in her beliefs, or alternately so shrewd and canny that she might imitate faith for social status, social media followers, etc. Similarly, Burke tries to portray Natalie as intelligent, having her win a full scholarship to Harvard, but then her character seems to lack all critical thinking throughout the rest of the novel. Fans may say that this shallow characterization is both what defines Natalie and what lies at the heart of these social media personas, but I feel that argument lacks rigor. And while I was raised in a decidedly secular family, ex-Evangelicals have shared more critical views of Natalie’s lack of defining beliefs.¹ Finally, the ending: oh boy, what a disappointment. [SPOILERS AHEAD, so skip the rest of this paragraph if needed!] Burke reveals that the entire 1855 homestead experience is in fact something Natalie chose to cosplay prior to a complete mental breakdown, simultaneously stripping real-life tradwives of their agency² and leaving readers to curse the crater-sized plot holes and inconsistencies.

So… as a compulsive beach read? Sure, Yesteryear is fine, but I think it kind of encapsulates a problem with much of the mediocre “upmarket fiction” we see today— it ultimately feels insubstantial, leaving the reader with nothing. I will never quote or reread Yesteryear, and honestly, the longer I go after finishing it, I’ll probably never think of it again.

Have you read Yesteryear? What were your thoughts? Share in the comments!

1. Here and here. ↩︎
2. Ignoring the Christian nationalism of tradwife content is so deeply problematic, and I would have loved to see a more thorough analysis of this content, but will content myself with the work of Tia Levings. ↩︎

I have a Bookshop.org list of #spellbooksaturday features for folks to peruse, but in the spirit of transparency, as a Bookshop.org affiliate, I receive a small percentage of book sales purchased through my links. If you find that off-putting, feel free to shop directly through bookshop.org or your own local bookseller! My only goal here is to resist Amazon and the mega-rich.

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