This satirical journey packs a punch – and worth the ride
This debut novel by the titular author has garnered significant public attention and rightfully so. Studios acquired the filming rights for the novel before the book was due to be published, with Anne Hathaway set to produce and star in the film. It’s an excellent selling point for a novel’s premise: a story about a “tradwife” influencer (known as traditional wife in the social media scene) who has been recognised for curating an online world dedicated to showcasing her life on a farm. Whether that may be teaching her online followers how to make homemade boules or heading to her barn to greet her chickens in the morning, we follow the life of a woman named Natalie Heller Mills – dedicated to showing off her dream life to the outside world. But her life transforms when she wakes up one morning in the same home she lives in but instead she’s transported back in time to 1885.
We are introduced to numerous characters who have shaped Natalie into the person she has become through multiple flashbacks of her past. We learn about her father’s abandonment when she was a child, her intensive Christian upbringing – all of which have followed her through to her college years, her marriage and her post-partum depression after the birth of her first child. The narrative is very tongue-in-cheek and often confronting – it also forces us as readers to question Natalie’s perspective at times as she is depicted as an unreliable and unlikable narrator.
Many critics argue that the novel’s inability to establish a relatable and sympathetic protagonist is a fundamental flaw, and one of the primary reasons they found the book and its narrative unappealing. However, it’s believed the author intentionally created a main character who has a warped perception of the world around her which causes her to react irrationally and cruelly to others around her. It stirs conversation about expectations that are placed on men and women who have designed a world dedicated to protect the conservative values that they inherently don’t believe in but blindly follow. It’s meant to cause controversy – that’s the whole point. And if that’s the point, then the author achieved her goal.
Dark humour can be a powerful tool for storytelling and author Caro Claire Burke uses irony repeatedly throughout the novel. During an interaction with her mother, Natalie explodes out of anger when she is confronted about her unsustainable lifestyle. Once her mother leaves, she takes numerous photographs of herself and uploads them on her Instagram page. While she is taking these photographs, her son is crying in her arms but she makes a comment that she doesn’t know how to soothe him so she continues taking pictures and ignoring his cries. Natalie is very clearly a selfish person but she is committed to curating a public perception that she is a wonderful mother. She feels exposed and vulnerable when she is called out for her poor behaviour by the people closest to her so she posts online to comfort herself. Irony allows us as readers to engage deeply with the text but simultaneously uncovers contradictive human patterns of behaviour.
While this novel had many elements that shined through, there were a few pain points. The ending is quite controversial in itself – some might find it incredible, others a bit disappointed. The book’s length didn’t help either with only 391 pages to tell a complex and nuanced story. There was still some breathing room to be had to flesh out a more satisfying ending. Some key moments in the ending were also not very clearly explained, with a few random moments that occurred on a whim. As a reader, it felt as if we were expected to just allow these incidents to happen which felt incredibly Hollywood-esque and inauthentic. This could have been the result of the book’s film rights already kicking into gear before its publication but that remains to be confirmed.
Yesteryear has had an incredible buzz in the publishing scene and will most certainly open up many talking points once the film adaptation is released.