Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke
May. 26th, 2026 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shatiI don't think this was a good book, but I had fun reading most of it, and I'm not really mad about its popularity since the conceit ("a traditional American woman, a 'tradwife' influencer, suddenly awakens in the brutal reality of 1855") is great.
Now to be a hater:
I never really got a handle on Natalie's background, worldview, strain of Christianity, etc. (I think every specific person I know of who she might be based on is LDS, but Natalie doesn't seem to be?) I don't think I'd recognize an authentic portrayal, for the record, but that didn't stop this one from feeling empty. I actually think this is part of why I never minded how awful she was: she mostly came across too much as a parody of a person for me to be uncomfortable -- oh there goes Natalie again abusing and exploiting people! :) Like cartoon violence. Her mom was the only interesting character to me, but she wasn't really more in focus, it just didn't bother me since she's barely there.
I did not like the prose style, which is a lot of boring thought italicizing, but I have to admit "annoying and poorly written" works fine with the first person and choice of narrator. I could believe that Natalie herself would write like that, and I was much more chill about this than about the excess of metaphor in the first person narration of The Ministry of Time. (I guess I never actually posted that write-up. I was so mad about the metaphors in The Ministry of Time.) That said, I did also find it kind of bargain bin Gone Girl. This was my reaction to the first few pages (copied from a chat):
"Manic pixie dream girl" was one of multiple moments where Natalie felt like a too-thin veneer over a person with a very different cultural background (and foreground I guess!) than I think hers is meant to be. I felt like large chunks of the books were "and then I spent months immersed in the parts of the internet Caro Claire Burke might plausibly spend her time in." I could be underestimating the overlap, though.
On a different note, what was going on with sexual assault in this novel. I am genuinely asking, feel free to answer. I saw the groundwork laid for Natalie's potential attraction to Shannon, I didn't see groundwork laid for sexual assault in particular, and maybe I'm underestimating both the homophobia (plausible) and the support for victims of sexual violence in the relevant communities (hm), but "I believe she found strangling me for fucking her husband erotic in a way that was violating for me," like -- would that be received with credulity and sympathy? And either way, are we supposed to think Shannon is lying, like Reena? Was Reena was lying? Is the tradwife industrial complex really driven by predatory ambiguously-queer women? Many questions!
I also tbh cannot really make sense of Old Caleb's psychological trajectory, but I didn't really try and I don't really want to know. Whatever's going on in his skull can stay there.
I don't remember actually watching Ballerina Farm when I started hearing about it, though I have genuinely terrible taste in short form internet video, so I don't say this from any kind of moral high ground. I am not posting selfies from the moral mountains of Idaho. But I did watch a few while reading this, and unless she's not the only one influencing with that kitchen and those mountains -- and she might not be -- holy shit I would consider suing lmao. Also if we're publishing thinly veiled parodies of specific influencers now I think this should have been based on this Nara Smith video.
Anyway. In many ways most of this is not what I wanted but is fine for what I think it's trying to be: mid fodder for heated book club discourse. For the most part it's breezy and shallow, and it's about people who produce breezy and shallow glimpses of their lives. It was easy to read. It reminded me that being a hater is occasionally not the least noble thing to be. (They're not at all the majority, but a number of Goodreads reviews were like: "This book is so mean to women who want children and organic food! :( Let women enjoy things!" Thank you! What I enjoy is being mean to people who build their careers on a politically troubling nostalgia.) But it bites off very large and serious things it could have chewed and time travel has such strong jaws ... I'm not necessarily curious enough to watch it, but I do wonder if the movie will be better; it very well could be.
(Rereading this post, I was like: What do I mean by shallow? and part of it is just that I wanted more subtlety and specificity, but I guess also: my idea of the 1800s US pioneer life isn't that notable in its misogyny but is notable in its Manifest Destiny, and Yesteryear has something to say about only one of those things. Trad stuff does foreground gender and this wasn't the actual 1800s, but I did feel like we were barely skimming the surface of what's being played with by Natalie and by the book itself. Okay I will stop editing this post to think out loud. <- edited again three times after typing that)
My old college roommate, Isaac Chotineer: But this isn't the first book you've read specifically because it has a plot similar to Kindred's, only to be upset that it's not Kindred. How many books has that been in all?
Me, looking at my stove clock which is turned forward about 23 minutes so I stop being late, only I got amnesia and now think it's genuinely 23 minutes later than it is: We don't need to talk about that.
Isaac Chotineer: Okay. And on the subject of Tiktok and Youtube, you tend to watch --
Me: I am 23 minutes late for my next interview.
Now to be a hater:
- Pity about the execution. I think a person could pull off the twist of the past not actually being the past, Natalie could be confronted with the harsh realities of the life she's pretending to lead without really involving the actual 1800s in it, but I didn't think this did; there's just not enough to the whole "past" storyline. So much of it is Natalie hurting her ankle, Natalie recovering from hurting her ankle, Natalie finding out that she somehow made a beeline for the one trap they had (?). I am genuinely so sensitive about ankle injuries at this point in my life and even I wouldn't put them in my top 10 concerns with either the trad lifestyle or the real 1800s. It reminded me of the Many Waters sunburns.
- And maybe even more crucially, while I think it's possible to pull off undercutting the selling point of the book, I object to doing so by plot-convenient fake years on the wall followed by plot-convenient amnesia. Come on.
- But it really was the selling point for me: I do think sending her to the actual 1800s would have been more interesting. (It also would have been a lot harder.)
I never really got a handle on Natalie's background, worldview, strain of Christianity, etc. (I think every specific person I know of who she might be based on is LDS, but Natalie doesn't seem to be?) I don't think I'd recognize an authentic portrayal, for the record, but that didn't stop this one from feeling empty. I actually think this is part of why I never minded how awful she was: she mostly came across too much as a parody of a person for me to be uncomfortable -- oh there goes Natalie again abusing and exploiting people! :) Like cartoon violence. Her mom was the only interesting character to me, but she wasn't really more in focus, it just didn't bother me since she's barely there.
I did not like the prose style, which is a lot of boring thought italicizing, but I have to admit "annoying and poorly written" works fine with the first person and choice of narrator. I could believe that Natalie herself would write like that, and I was much more chill about this than about the excess of metaphor in the first person narration of The Ministry of Time. (I guess I never actually posted that write-up. I was so mad about the metaphors in The Ministry of Time.) That said, I did also find it kind of bargain bin Gone Girl. This was my reaction to the first few pages (copied from a chat):
"And who was I?
A flawless Christian woman. The manic pixie American dream girl of this nation's deepest, darkest fantasies. The mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to. Like a nun in a porno, it didn't make sense, but also, by God: it worked.
My name is Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive."
ma'am you are neither lestat nor ebony dark'ness dementia raven way
"Manic pixie dream girl" was one of multiple moments where Natalie felt like a too-thin veneer over a person with a very different cultural background (and foreground I guess!) than I think hers is meant to be. I felt like large chunks of the books were "and then I spent months immersed in the parts of the internet Caro Claire Burke might plausibly spend her time in." I could be underestimating the overlap, though.
On a different note, what was going on with sexual assault in this novel. I am genuinely asking, feel free to answer. I saw the groundwork laid for Natalie's potential attraction to Shannon, I didn't see groundwork laid for sexual assault in particular, and maybe I'm underestimating both the homophobia (plausible) and the support for victims of sexual violence in the relevant communities (hm), but "I believe she found strangling me for fucking her husband erotic in a way that was violating for me," like -- would that be received with credulity and sympathy? And either way, are we supposed to think Shannon is lying, like Reena? Was Reena was lying? Is the tradwife industrial complex really driven by predatory ambiguously-queer women? Many questions!
I also tbh cannot really make sense of Old Caleb's psychological trajectory, but I didn't really try and I don't really want to know. Whatever's going on in his skull can stay there.
I don't remember actually watching Ballerina Farm when I started hearing about it, though I have genuinely terrible taste in short form internet video, so I don't say this from any kind of moral high ground. I am not posting selfies from the moral mountains of Idaho. But I did watch a few while reading this, and unless she's not the only one influencing with that kitchen and those mountains -- and she might not be -- holy shit I would consider suing lmao. Also if we're publishing thinly veiled parodies of specific influencers now I think this should have been based on this Nara Smith video.
Anyway. In many ways most of this is not what I wanted but is fine for what I think it's trying to be: mid fodder for heated book club discourse. For the most part it's breezy and shallow, and it's about people who produce breezy and shallow glimpses of their lives. It was easy to read. It reminded me that being a hater is occasionally not the least noble thing to be. (They're not at all the majority, but a number of Goodreads reviews were like: "This book is so mean to women who want children and organic food! :( Let women enjoy things!" Thank you! What I enjoy is being mean to people who build their careers on a politically troubling nostalgia.) But it bites off very large and serious things it could have chewed and time travel has such strong jaws ... I'm not necessarily curious enough to watch it, but I do wonder if the movie will be better; it very well could be.
(Rereading this post, I was like: What do I mean by shallow? and part of it is just that I wanted more subtlety and specificity, but I guess also: my idea of the 1800s US pioneer life isn't that notable in its misogyny but is notable in its Manifest Destiny, and Yesteryear has something to say about only one of those things. Trad stuff does foreground gender and this wasn't the actual 1800s, but I did feel like we were barely skimming the surface of what's being played with by Natalie and by the book itself. Okay I will stop editing this post to think out loud. <- edited again three times after typing that)
My old college roommate, Isaac Chotineer: But this isn't the first book you've read specifically because it has a plot similar to Kindred's, only to be upset that it's not Kindred. How many books has that been in all?
Me, looking at my stove clock which is turned forward about 23 minutes so I stop being late, only I got amnesia and now think it's genuinely 23 minutes later than it is: We don't need to talk about that.
Isaac Chotineer: Okay. And on the subject of Tiktok and Youtube, you tend to watch --
Me: I am 23 minutes late for my next interview.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-26 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-26 09:32 pm (UTC)