Thank you so much!! I'm very happy to hear you liked it and can't thank you enough for the rich, deep, nuanced discussion and enquiry you make space for. It's a gift!
Thank you. This book quite literally left me feeling how the patriarchy does: was this my fault, am I misunderstanding? Also, in my experience, millennials (of which Caro Claire Burke is one) are sometimes overly reductive while simultaneously critical of every detail. It’s something that has worsened in my lifetime (I’m 50). I am ALL for complaining and judging, but I’m also for nuance and trying to humanize. I sometimes wonder if this is the privilege of having grown up before everything became an online discussion and spectacle. “We can’t seriously look at Ballerina farm and other “tradwives” and be so reductive as to say they’re privileged white women who’ve chosen this lifestyle without exploring this further, or we'd only be failing as completely as Yesteryear does at asking the question (and here I'm absolutely taking them on their word when they say this is the life they want for themselves): why? Why do some women genuinely feel that they want to leave their careers and dreams — and perhaps healthier relationships — behind and be the docile wives of domineering husbands, leading a lifestyle that women have died fighting against so we could all have more freedom, social media or not?” The unwillingness or in the least the decision not to commit time in the book to examining any aspect of what made Natalie herself (instead she’s just crazy, in the end…big big yikes) feels millennial to me. Maybe that is unfair. I’d love to be challenged on it
Hey Caryn! It really is a strange feeling — in fact I don't think I'd ever felt this (very specific) kind of confusion reading a book before. It's jarring to read a story that takes appearance for substance and asks no questions, truly bizarre. The reason I didn't speculate much on why CCB made the choices she made — so I put the questions there and deliberately didn't answer them — was that while I think they're important and we should be asking them, we can only guess at the answers. Her being a woman means she, too, is not immune to all the bullshit we internalise (and I think this REALLY shows in the book), so it was important to me to be fair.
I'm 47, so right there with ya... I hope it's less a case of "unwillingness to commit" to examining things further (to borrow your words) and more a lack of awareness, but I might very well be entirely wrong — though I do think writing it to be played on a screen is seriously problematic, to put it mildly.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with me, I really appreciate the discussion!
Thank you for pointing out the importance of sitting with questions that we don’t have the answers to ❤️ I like to know things, as my therapist knows :)
I grew up in a far right, intensely fundamentalist Christian cult that was exactly what Ballerina Farm and the like are trying to emulate, and I was so excited by the premise of Yesteryear. Her obvious lack of care or curiosity about, as you said, *why* Natalie believes all of this (or a gross lack of research necessary to make her a real person in this lifestyle) felt deeply disrespectful to the topic. As someone who understands on an intimate level the mindset of women like this, having it reduced to just being crazy or faking all of it misses the point of how insidious it is and how a sincere, deep belief in the lifestyle and the values and principles behind it motivate these women. If you cannot research this lifestyle with dignity and curiosity, no matter how bizarre it (truly) is, and cannot summon up empathy and seeing these people as human, how are we supposed to change it?
I got out of the cult in my twenties because of friends who treated me with dignity, even in my most polarizing moments, and it honestly makes me so angry to see Natalie turned into a ridiculous laughingstock instead of trying to understand the humanity that brings someone to this space, which is what we have to have to help people get out of it and destroy it. Beautiful article, will be following!
Hey Alexandra, thanks for sharing your experience with me. This post actually ended up getting some traction with women who lead a "traditional lifestyle" and it pains me that so many feel demeaned by the book. Happy to hear that's no longer you, but I get why it would feel disrespectful — it feels like a case of "the ends justify the means" (though the end doesn't say much of anything). We need to find a way to talk about the highly-problematic patriarchal, fundamentalist roots of the "tradwife" choice without attacking other women, just like and we need to talk about the issues of social media without resorting to mocking other women in order to do it. I feel like we keep falling into this trap of getting so busy yelling at each other that we fail to notice that's how we lose.
Thank you so much for the support, it means a lot!
Love this analysis! As a writer, I understand the impulse to leave Natalie generically Christian to allow the reader to self-insert (especially in this situation where they want it to appeal to as large an audience as possible) but I think it did her a bit of a disservice and left her a little less fleshed out than I would have liked. She was supposed to be satire but leaned more towards caricature at times, and while there’s much to criticize about trad wife influencers, there’s so much to dive into about the actual trad wives behind them, who are real people with real beliefs.
Hey Elizabeth, I really appreciate you stopping by and engaging with what I wrote! It makes me incredibly happy to be sharing this space with all of you.
I don't think it's necessarily a problem (by itself) for Natalie's religion to be non-specific, my main concern is that it necessarily leads to difficulty in writing more deeply about her relationship with God, which in turn made it easier to just do away with any genuine faith at all on Natalie's part. The problem is, isn't that same (fundamentalist) faith often a huge part of what keeps women in this place of subservience? I feel like by making that choice, CCB took away Natalie's ground before she even wrote her, don't you think?
I agree. I grew up evangelical and while I wasn’t homeschooled or raised super fundie, I knew a lot of people who were, so I’m very familiar with that particular type of trad wife (which is why it’s amusing to see it played out in the zeitgeist). I’m also, on the other side of the equation, familiar with the secular equivalent of that, which is to say, the left-wing homeschooling families of the 90s, which now have sort of horseshoed around to meet the conservatives in a way. I really could go on and on about this and I will give CCB this—she sure gave us a lot to talk about which is really the dream for any author, isn’t it?
Not Elizabeth but I definitely agree with your conclusion.
For that matter, making her faith non-specific also eliminates a lot of important mythos, rituals, and so on that are part of any faith practice, from mainline to evangelical to raging fundamentalist.
I dunno. As a science fiction and fantasy writer, I end up creating fake religions, including fake Christian faiths, and...every review I read ends up talking about how leaving Natalie generically Christian makes her character flat. I've been around the block...former evangelical, lapsed Catholic, familiar with Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, and from what I'm reading, the author's choice ended up leaving the main character somewhat flat. No matter what faith you're talking about, there are mythos, rituals, and traditions that shape what a believing woman does and...
(Yeah, I walk the talk and if you want examples, check out my A Different Life: Now. Always. Forever. for a subplot involving a coersive religious faith. Or the short story Red Running which is outright horror and got me kicked out of a nonprofit anthology because two screeners were shocked by it and considered it to be heresy.)
Excellent summary. I devoured this book in three sittings in under forty eight hours because I was desperate to get to the part where CCB got to the meat. It never came and I had to try to fall asleep at 11:58pm while so much of what you said bounced around my mind. In some ways, the book felt like an exorcism for CCB. The obsession with BF was repulsive and needed to be dealt with. One piece not mentioned here that I found fascinating, was that CCB decided to end the story by locking the character away. A leftist feminist chooses the carceral system as the final nail in the coffin!
Heya Caitlin! Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, it means a lot!
I have to confess I didn't want to agree with you because I badly wanted to give CCB the benefit of the doubt, but I do think that the BF stuff was in bad taste and excessive, unfortunately. The ending is odd, but I think if the book was genuine social commentary about what happens to women who rebel — or make too much money or what have you — rather than a satire, it could've worked. Like you, I hoped it would get there, but I think the point it does make instead is that we can't claim to speak for women while mocking them. I hope there's a lesson there...
What a way to launch! Yesteryear was so high up on my TBR I'm now glad I've read your incredible review. I wonder if you'd like Chouette by Claire Oshetsky better, it touches upon patriarchy, motherhood, female rage and postpartum depression (and much more).
Hey, thank you so much! It's great to be having this conversation with other women and I'm happy to hear my text spoke to you :) Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look into it! And if you do read Yesteryear, let us know what you thought! 💛
This was a fantastic review, and your anger and despair and passion in that last paragraph has legitimately moved me to go to my pile of feminist books, half unread, and put them right to the top of my TBR. I don’t expect I’ll read Yesteryear, and I’m fairly happy in that opinion based on your (and other’s) reviews, but writing pieces like this, that say something so meaningful, is so important beyond just reviewing a book. Thank you!
I was 100% not prepared for this, I cried haha! Regardless of whether this was a one time Substack post for me or I'm here writing 10 years from now, knowing you actually felt what I wrote and that it moved you to get into your feminist books would be more than enough — it's more than I ever hoped for (not to mention what you wrote in your restack). Thank you so much for sharing this with me, truly. 💛
Thank you so much Jaime! This is the best feedback I could hope for, I'm very happy you enjoyed reading it and that you found it thought-provoking - it was certainly I wild ride writing it and I really appreciate the support :)
This mirrors my thoughts and feelings about Yesteryear perfectly! Was a great initial concept that went off the rails and never felt fully fleshed out.
Is TikTok bestseller a new genre? I think we should make it one. Because yeah this book was too much but too little but is earning out the money invested in it too soon.
Hey Lauren, Thanks for reading! To answer your question, I think it already is? I'm flabbergasted by the amount of books that have "huge success on Tiktok!!" on the back cover. I don't even know what that means. I have no issues with writing that's purely for entertainment purposes (I'm a sucker for psychological thrillers), but I do have an issue with work that pretends to be what it isn't, even more so where feminism is concerned.
Excellent analysis. Loved every word of it. I'm unlikely to pick up the book because that sort of shallow characterization...which I've seen brought up in one form or another in multiple essays...simply leads me to the I Don't Care About These People Anymore point where I don't finish the book.
Thank you!! It's an odd one for sure, worth reading not only for critical purposes but because it is so much a product of what it criticises — and *that*, I believe, only goes to show how pervasive social media is. It's almost like it makes its own point by being unable to make a point. That said, I totally get not wanting to go there when there are so many wonderful things too read out there (and never enough time). Thanks for reading!!
And thank you for responding. Yeah, I read one analysis by a fan who basically said those of us critiquing it are just haters...and when I cited some stuff I'd written, she got snippy with me. Whateves. I know I'm not going to write that particular combination because I just don't want to take the time to get into influencer culture. However, the project I'm currently poking at (well, there's three of them, one of which has NOTHING TO DO with religion) is going to be skewering some Manifest Destiny/long-held Pacific Northwest sacred cows in a way...it might be worth trying to take it tradpub but I don't think I'll do it.
What an incredible first post!!
Thank you so much!! I'm very happy to hear you liked it and can't thank you enough for the rich, deep, nuanced discussion and enquiry you make space for. It's a gift!
I WILL CRY. Please keep writing!
Thank you. This book quite literally left me feeling how the patriarchy does: was this my fault, am I misunderstanding? Also, in my experience, millennials (of which Caro Claire Burke is one) are sometimes overly reductive while simultaneously critical of every detail. It’s something that has worsened in my lifetime (I’m 50). I am ALL for complaining and judging, but I’m also for nuance and trying to humanize. I sometimes wonder if this is the privilege of having grown up before everything became an online discussion and spectacle. “We can’t seriously look at Ballerina farm and other “tradwives” and be so reductive as to say they’re privileged white women who’ve chosen this lifestyle without exploring this further, or we'd only be failing as completely as Yesteryear does at asking the question (and here I'm absolutely taking them on their word when they say this is the life they want for themselves): why? Why do some women genuinely feel that they want to leave their careers and dreams — and perhaps healthier relationships — behind and be the docile wives of domineering husbands, leading a lifestyle that women have died fighting against so we could all have more freedom, social media or not?” The unwillingness or in the least the decision not to commit time in the book to examining any aspect of what made Natalie herself (instead she’s just crazy, in the end…big big yikes) feels millennial to me. Maybe that is unfair. I’d love to be challenged on it
Hey Caryn! It really is a strange feeling — in fact I don't think I'd ever felt this (very specific) kind of confusion reading a book before. It's jarring to read a story that takes appearance for substance and asks no questions, truly bizarre. The reason I didn't speculate much on why CCB made the choices she made — so I put the questions there and deliberately didn't answer them — was that while I think they're important and we should be asking them, we can only guess at the answers. Her being a woman means she, too, is not immune to all the bullshit we internalise (and I think this REALLY shows in the book), so it was important to me to be fair.
I'm 47, so right there with ya... I hope it's less a case of "unwillingness to commit" to examining things further (to borrow your words) and more a lack of awareness, but I might very well be entirely wrong — though I do think writing it to be played on a screen is seriously problematic, to put it mildly.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with me, I really appreciate the discussion!
Thank you for pointing out the importance of sitting with questions that we don’t have the answers to ❤️ I like to know things, as my therapist knows :)
Thank god you mentioned therapy, I need a session! ❤️
I grew up in a far right, intensely fundamentalist Christian cult that was exactly what Ballerina Farm and the like are trying to emulate, and I was so excited by the premise of Yesteryear. Her obvious lack of care or curiosity about, as you said, *why* Natalie believes all of this (or a gross lack of research necessary to make her a real person in this lifestyle) felt deeply disrespectful to the topic. As someone who understands on an intimate level the mindset of women like this, having it reduced to just being crazy or faking all of it misses the point of how insidious it is and how a sincere, deep belief in the lifestyle and the values and principles behind it motivate these women. If you cannot research this lifestyle with dignity and curiosity, no matter how bizarre it (truly) is, and cannot summon up empathy and seeing these people as human, how are we supposed to change it?
I got out of the cult in my twenties because of friends who treated me with dignity, even in my most polarizing moments, and it honestly makes me so angry to see Natalie turned into a ridiculous laughingstock instead of trying to understand the humanity that brings someone to this space, which is what we have to have to help people get out of it and destroy it. Beautiful article, will be following!
Hey Alexandra, thanks for sharing your experience with me. This post actually ended up getting some traction with women who lead a "traditional lifestyle" and it pains me that so many feel demeaned by the book. Happy to hear that's no longer you, but I get why it would feel disrespectful — it feels like a case of "the ends justify the means" (though the end doesn't say much of anything). We need to find a way to talk about the highly-problematic patriarchal, fundamentalist roots of the "tradwife" choice without attacking other women, just like and we need to talk about the issues of social media without resorting to mocking other women in order to do it. I feel like we keep falling into this trap of getting so busy yelling at each other that we fail to notice that's how we lose.
Thank you so much for the support, it means a lot!
Love this analysis! As a writer, I understand the impulse to leave Natalie generically Christian to allow the reader to self-insert (especially in this situation where they want it to appeal to as large an audience as possible) but I think it did her a bit of a disservice and left her a little less fleshed out than I would have liked. She was supposed to be satire but leaned more towards caricature at times, and while there’s much to criticize about trad wife influencers, there’s so much to dive into about the actual trad wives behind them, who are real people with real beliefs.
Hey Elizabeth, I really appreciate you stopping by and engaging with what I wrote! It makes me incredibly happy to be sharing this space with all of you.
I don't think it's necessarily a problem (by itself) for Natalie's religion to be non-specific, my main concern is that it necessarily leads to difficulty in writing more deeply about her relationship with God, which in turn made it easier to just do away with any genuine faith at all on Natalie's part. The problem is, isn't that same (fundamentalist) faith often a huge part of what keeps women in this place of subservience? I feel like by making that choice, CCB took away Natalie's ground before she even wrote her, don't you think?
I agree. I grew up evangelical and while I wasn’t homeschooled or raised super fundie, I knew a lot of people who were, so I’m very familiar with that particular type of trad wife (which is why it’s amusing to see it played out in the zeitgeist). I’m also, on the other side of the equation, familiar with the secular equivalent of that, which is to say, the left-wing homeschooling families of the 90s, which now have sort of horseshoed around to meet the conservatives in a way. I really could go on and on about this and I will give CCB this—she sure gave us a lot to talk about which is really the dream for any author, isn’t it?
Not Elizabeth but I definitely agree with your conclusion.
For that matter, making her faith non-specific also eliminates a lot of important mythos, rituals, and so on that are part of any faith practice, from mainline to evangelical to raging fundamentalist.
I dunno. As a science fiction and fantasy writer, I end up creating fake religions, including fake Christian faiths, and...every review I read ends up talking about how leaving Natalie generically Christian makes her character flat. I've been around the block...former evangelical, lapsed Catholic, familiar with Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, and from what I'm reading, the author's choice ended up leaving the main character somewhat flat. No matter what faith you're talking about, there are mythos, rituals, and traditions that shape what a believing woman does and...
(Yeah, I walk the talk and if you want examples, check out my A Different Life: Now. Always. Forever. for a subplot involving a coersive religious faith. Or the short story Red Running which is outright horror and got me kicked out of a nonprofit anthology because two screeners were shocked by it and considered it to be heresy.)
Excellent summary. I devoured this book in three sittings in under forty eight hours because I was desperate to get to the part where CCB got to the meat. It never came and I had to try to fall asleep at 11:58pm while so much of what you said bounced around my mind. In some ways, the book felt like an exorcism for CCB. The obsession with BF was repulsive and needed to be dealt with. One piece not mentioned here that I found fascinating, was that CCB decided to end the story by locking the character away. A leftist feminist chooses the carceral system as the final nail in the coffin!
Heya Caitlin! Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, it means a lot!
I have to confess I didn't want to agree with you because I badly wanted to give CCB the benefit of the doubt, but I do think that the BF stuff was in bad taste and excessive, unfortunately. The ending is odd, but I think if the book was genuine social commentary about what happens to women who rebel — or make too much money or what have you — rather than a satire, it could've worked. Like you, I hoped it would get there, but I think the point it does make instead is that we can't claim to speak for women while mocking them. I hope there's a lesson there...
What a way to launch! Yesteryear was so high up on my TBR I'm now glad I've read your incredible review. I wonder if you'd like Chouette by Claire Oshetsky better, it touches upon patriarchy, motherhood, female rage and postpartum depression (and much more).
Hey, thank you so much! It's great to be having this conversation with other women and I'm happy to hear my text spoke to you :) Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look into it! And if you do read Yesteryear, let us know what you thought! 💛
This was a fantastic review, and your anger and despair and passion in that last paragraph has legitimately moved me to go to my pile of feminist books, half unread, and put them right to the top of my TBR. I don’t expect I’ll read Yesteryear, and I’m fairly happy in that opinion based on your (and other’s) reviews, but writing pieces like this, that say something so meaningful, is so important beyond just reviewing a book. Thank you!
I was 100% not prepared for this, I cried haha! Regardless of whether this was a one time Substack post for me or I'm here writing 10 years from now, knowing you actually felt what I wrote and that it moved you to get into your feminist books would be more than enough — it's more than I ever hoped for (not to mention what you wrote in your restack). Thank you so much for sharing this with me, truly. 💛
Wow! Brilliantly written. Thoughtful, provoking, executed with such awareness and grace. Thank you!
Thank you so much Jaime! This is the best feedback I could hope for, I'm very happy you enjoyed reading it and that you found it thought-provoking - it was certainly I wild ride writing it and I really appreciate the support :)
Brava!!
Hey, thank you so much! It means a lot 💛
This mirrors my thoughts and feelings about Yesteryear perfectly! Was a great initial concept that went off the rails and never felt fully fleshed out.
Hey Allie, thanks! I like “off the rails” to describe it. :)
Wow thank you for this!
Thank YOU! :)
This was all spot on.
Hey Kelly, thanks for reading! :)
Is TikTok bestseller a new genre? I think we should make it one. Because yeah this book was too much but too little but is earning out the money invested in it too soon.
Hey Lauren, Thanks for reading! To answer your question, I think it already is? I'm flabbergasted by the amount of books that have "huge success on Tiktok!!" on the back cover. I don't even know what that means. I have no issues with writing that's purely for entertainment purposes (I'm a sucker for psychological thrillers), but I do have an issue with work that pretends to be what it isn't, even more so where feminism is concerned.
Excellent analysis. Loved every word of it. I'm unlikely to pick up the book because that sort of shallow characterization...which I've seen brought up in one form or another in multiple essays...simply leads me to the I Don't Care About These People Anymore point where I don't finish the book.
Thank you!! It's an odd one for sure, worth reading not only for critical purposes but because it is so much a product of what it criticises — and *that*, I believe, only goes to show how pervasive social media is. It's almost like it makes its own point by being unable to make a point. That said, I totally get not wanting to go there when there are so many wonderful things too read out there (and never enough time). Thanks for reading!!
And thank you for responding. Yeah, I read one analysis by a fan who basically said those of us critiquing it are just haters...and when I cited some stuff I'd written, she got snippy with me. Whateves. I know I'm not going to write that particular combination because I just don't want to take the time to get into influencer culture. However, the project I'm currently poking at (well, there's three of them, one of which has NOTHING TO DO with religion) is going to be skewering some Manifest Destiny/long-held Pacific Northwest sacred cows in a way...it might be worth trying to take it tradpub but I don't think I'll do it.