Critics in Conversation is a “podcast on the page” feature in which contributors discuss a book or issue currently making headlines in the literary world.
Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel Yesteryear isn’t just the “it” book of the summer, it’s become a bona fide cultural phenomenon. The story about an Idaho tradwife influencer who is whisked back to 1855 has been a New York Times bestseller since it came out April 7. But that barely captures the novel’s reach. In twelve years as a bookseller (and much longer as a reader), I can’t remember a trendier book club pick. And the novel is ubiquitous on Bookstagram and BookTok.
The majority of readers and reviewers have loved Yesteryear. But it is always fascinating how perceptions of a book change over time based partly on the conversations surrounding it. There will always be those readers who either love it or hate it exactly because it’s become popular. For new readers who want to faithfully evaluate the book on its merits alone, it means the book becomes more closely scrutinized the more popular it gets. Which is unquestionably a good thing—any book that gets people talking about books is a net positive in our view. But if you’re someone who has been on the fence, it may be hard to know: Is this a book worth my time?
That’s why we thought this was the perfect novel to tackle for our second installment of Critics in Conversation. Chicago Review of Books Editor-at-Large Sara Cutaia was among the first readers. Daily Editor Greg Zimmerman was a latecomer to the book. Below, we discuss the book’s virtues and vices, reading unlikeable characters, and Yesteryear’s overall place in the culture.
Greg Zimmerman: You and I talked about this book right after you read it but long before I did. In fact, talking with you was ultimately what made me decide I needed to read it. So the honors are yours to start: Give us your one-paragraph review. What about this novel worked for you? What didn’t?
Sara Cutaia: For starters, my writer group and I saw this baffling video of Anne Hathaway promoting this book way before it was published, and then read the blurb—tradwife influencer seemingly wakes up in the 1800s—and decided we had to read it together. One of the group members read it first, in a flurry, and was one of those readers who despised it. As you said in your intro, her spoiler-free review of it made me that much more eager to read it myself, and I tried desperately to go in with an open mind. What surprised me was how much I … didn’t … hate it (my friends and I often have similar tastes in literature!). Burke’s writing is what worked best for me—for a debut novelist, her craft at the sentence level is impeccable, and I agree with most of the praise it’s getting for being immensely and pleasurably readable. I also found the complexity of all these issues—patriarchy, religion, power, motherhood, autonomy—endlessly discussable. The more distance I get from my reading of it, the weaker my opinions become on what didn’t work. Initially it felt like there was a lot of hatred from the voice of Burke herself seeping onto the page, but I think as the totality of the book has sat with me, and I revisit the arc and the ties that connect everything, I think there’s purpose to all of it.
Greg Zimmerman: I fully agree with you that what worked best for me is Burke’s writing. I absolutely tore through this book! But just to get this out of the way: I went in with as open a mind as I possibly could, really hoping I’d like it (I will never understand the “hate read” or readers who go in hoping to dislike something). But I just…didn’t. And I’m writing this now with a clear conscience that I tried my best, but it wasn’t for me.
The most surface-level discussion of this book has centered on the fact that the protagonist Natalie is deeply unlikeable. If you’re a person who needs to like their main character, right off the bat, this is not your novel. But part of the problem for me is that there are two layers of unlike-ability here. The first is, well, to put it bluntly, her belief system is the antithesis of everything I believe. But that’s the easy part, the expected part. The other layer is that she’s totally inauthentic, a complete fake—and what’s more, she knows that.
There’s another whole discussion to be had about lifestyle influencers specifically and social media generally. We all understand that social media is everyone’s carefully curated life; a performance. But Natalie is presenting her social media as how her life really is, and how great it is, and why her way is the best way. She tells us at one point: “The goal of the influencer is not to be lovable, and it is not to be unbearable. The goal is to be both at once. In other words: addicting.” So she fully understands it’s all complete bullshit. Which was, I’ll admit, a fascinating strategy from a craft standpoint. Kudos to Burke for creating this super layered character. But to me, it was just a bridge too far.
This idea of performance is a major through-line in the novel. What did you make of Natalie’s inauthenticity?
Sara Cutaia: See, this is what I love about this book: I am dying to have this conversation with you, and not to convince you of my view, but just to talk it out. Because I think Natalie is inauthentic too, but I thought that element absolutely fueled my enjoyment of the reading. It was delicious to see how even she does not believe her lifestyle, and it made me think deep into the night about what that might mean. If we’re looking at this book as a commentary of the tradlife lifestyle, I think Natalie should not be the one-size-fits-all generalization, of course. But I can’t help but think that Natalie’s tripling-down on committing to the image of her life speaks to what I thought was a compelling message: Natalie as a person is a huge narcissist incapable of admitting she’s wrong, but also deeply desires freedom. Freedom from the roles she’s been told she should inhabit: mother, wife, a submissive, Godly woman, etc. Somewhere along the way, she gave up that freedom, and I thought that her diving into this lifestyle so vehemently was her way of making it worth it. She steers her husband, she manipulates her father-in-law, she starts this business, she shuns her own family when they don’t get with the program. She portrays an idyllic life as a tradwife, and yet she absolutely does not embody the traditional, conservative ideology behind it.
Inauthentic, yes, but what I thought Burke did well was splice in Natalie’s backstory—an intelligent, ambitious young woman who (this is where I know controversy will come in) I see as a victim. Patriarchy and the religious society she is brought up in ultimately failed her and created the caricature we see on the page—someone who is desperate and flailing and cannot look at her life as anything other than a happy, bubbly success because then what does she have left? Children who don’t know her, a dumb, bigoted husband, a disapproving mother, and a farm she never even wanted in the first place. It’s equal parts denial and self-deception.
Greg Zimmerman: That’s really well put, and we definitely agree she’s ambitious, but still crying for help. I think we’ve maybe arrived at the heart of the matter here, too. Readers who are willing to go with her deeper through her layers of character, to empathize with her, to even commend her for how she deals with her loss of freedom and her victimhood are the ones who love the book. I can hear those readers yelling at me, a reader who wasn’t able to buy in as deeply and therefore didn’t love the book: “You didn’t like her performance, her manipulation of reality, her struggle? But that’s the whole point.” I get that, I just never bought that her struggle was real. If she was so good at manipulating everyone else’s reality, why couldn’t she do her own?
I wonder if part of the divide here comes from whether or not readers treat this as satire. Though I thought parts were really funny (she says at one point, “I’d been working, lately, on being whimsical” … which is like saying “I’m making some detailed plans to be more spontaneous.” Huge LOL), I didn’t necessarily read it as satire. Did you? Does it matter to you whether it technically is satire or not?
Sara Cutaia: Never buying into her struggle is so valid! To clarify my point before getting to your question: I absolutely think she is also at fault for her own struggles. Everyone has a choice, even in unfair situations, and I think Natalie always chose the wrong thing.
I laughed out loud a number of times too (Burke is a great humor writer here; the number of times Natalie called someone a bad name in her own head and then said “sorry, Lord” was comedy gold). As for if this was satire? Such an interesting thing to think about! I think ultimately yes, it can be considered a satire. It exaggerates and humorizes and holds up a mirror for society’s shortcomings. Does it matter if it was or not? I don’t think so. What I most admire about this novel is that it has gotten people talking, debating, thinking critically (I hope…), eager to read more, to research, etc. And that’s what great art should do, whether or not you like it.
One thing that really gets people talking? That ending. I heard a lot of folks were thrown for a loop, another aspect that either landed or didn’t for readers. My writer friend who read this first even hinted that the ending really annoyed her and called it a “twist,” so I went in kind of looking for hints as to what was going on, but I never figured it out before the reveal. What about you? Did it land, did it make sense, do you think a better ending is in a drawer somewhere?
Greg Zimmerman: This is why I’ve loved talking with you about this book: Though we have different opinions on what worked and what didn’t here, we’ve also found a lot of common ground. Like you, one thing I admire about the book is that it has definitely gotten people thinking critically about it and the culture at large. I mentioned in the opener that because of its popularity, it will be more closely scrutinized and I think for that reason, readers have found more to nitpick. This novel is a BIG swing from a debut novelist, and so massive kudos to Burke for her fearlessness with this novel.
And you’re sure right that the ending has gotten people talking! I have no idea how Burke wrote the novel, but when I finished, I assumed the ending had to come first in her mind, and then she wrote towards that big idea. Maybe not? I do know, though, that the mark of a good writer is that she is able to convince you to trust her to answer all the questions bubbling in your mind as you read. The structure of the novel (alternating between 1855 Natalie and real-time Natalie) and the little nuggets of clue in the 1855 sections do imply that we will get answers, eventually, and I read quickly because I couldn’t wait to find out.
I’d heard about the BIG TWIST ENDING and was really hoping it wasn’t a case of “aliens descended and killed them all”—which was one of my college writing teacher’s favorite ways of describing out-of-left-field, lazy endings. It’s definitely not that, so for that reason, I appreciated the ending from a craft standpoint, even though I thought it a littttle anti-climactic after all the time we spend in the 1855 sections getting to that ending. So maybe my issue isn’t with the ending itself, but that the “yesteryear” sections could’ve perhaps been compressed. As you said, though, I think however you feel about how “earned” the ending is will influence how you feel about the novel as a whole.
Okay, last word to you: If someone has read our conversation this far, and is still on the fence, put on your bookseller hat for a second: What would you say to them about why they should give it a try?
Sara Cutaia: Ah yes, my old bookseller hat! Handselling really lets you verbalize beneath all the buzz, so here’s what I would say: Yesteryear is all the things you’ve heard—a book about tradwives, and influencers, a satire and somewhat chilling psychological thriller. And it is a novel that tries to dig into what it means to be a woman in our current world, what it means to want and wield power, what it means to cave to ideologies… and all of it written in excellent, skilled, unputdownable prose. Can’t say you’ll love it, but I think you’ll be glad you read it.
FICTION
Yesteryear
By Caro Claire Burke
Knopf
