Book Review: Yesteryear

I know, I know. Everyone has already read Yesteryear. I kept delaying reading this one because so many fellow readers who share similar tastes to my own gave this very mixed reviews. I love to read, and for the sake of this blog I try to read as many great books as I can. That often means bumping books I think I will love up the “To Be Read” list ahead of books already waiting for me to pick them up.

But when a friend texted me asking me to read it because she wanted to hear my take on it, I (obviously) had to read it. What a compliment to me! (Thank you, Liz!)

The Book (as presented by the publisher)

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.

*The previous three paragraphs were taken directly from the Amazon listing for this book.

The Book (my description having actually read it)

Natalie comes from a traditional home where Christian values are emphasized. When she leaves her home in Idaho to attend Harvard, she discovers a foreign world filled with liberated women who seem anything but free and happy. This causes her to reject the world as she sees it because she sees nothing good in it. She marries a handsome young man named Caleb, quickly gets pregnant, and drops out of school to fully embrace being a wife and mother. When she realizes that her husband (who happens to come from deep pockets of money) has no interest in making a name for himself at the same time she realizes that motherhood is not at all what she expected it to be, she decides to take matters into her own hands. She asks her father-in-law to buy them a farm, and she slowly but surely builds an isolated life for herself and her growing family on said farm. She purposefully misleads her millions of Instagram followers into thinking she has achieved living organically and off-the-grid, when in fact she is just hiding all the modern amenities she uses.

One day, she wakes up and finds herself in an alternate world where the “reality” she has been presenting to the world has become her true reality.

What I Liked

This book was definitely a page-turner for me. It was part mystery (How did she get here? Is this really happening?) and part social commentary. This book takes a hard look at performative culture and the effects of it, and I think it does that well. It also examines mental health, and I think it does so relatively well. As a social commentary about performative culture, I like this book.

What I Didn’t Like

For me, the enormous problem with this book is the marketing of the book. It is billed as “a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.” If this was the author’s intention, I think she failed miserably.

The protagonist Natalie, despite everything she claims, is very clearly not a Christian. She is hateful, spiteful, and aggressive. So to say this book looks at faith is only true in a case where faith goes horribly wrong. Does it look at what happens when someone embraces faith only on the surface? Yes. So, again, it is a great commentary on performative culture.

Natalie also very clearly hates the idea of a “trad wife” role, despite the fact that she is presenting that to the world. She does everything she can to get out of the role. She hires nannies to teach, care for, and raise her children while she runs her farm instagram account and business. She belittles her husband constantly and uses him as a sperm donor (via turkey baster…no, I am no kidding) instead of loving or serving him in any way. So, I find the idea that anyone who reads this should think it actually looks at tradition offensive. Natalie’s life in no way represents a traditional homemaker’s life. When she finds herself in the alternate world, it does more closely represent a “trad wife” role, but again only in a way that has gone horribly wrong.

Based on all the descriptions of this book, I was hoping for an examination of a character who really and truly lived a “trad wife” lifestyle (even if she presented in a different way than she lived it on her social media accounts) and who then found herself living the same life in the alternate world where she was not afforded the comforts and rights of modern society. For me, that would have been a much more powerful book. Instead, I read a story about a woman who already hated the “trad wife” lifestyle but who then was forced to live it to the extreme.

Final Thoughts

I do think this book is worth reading, and it would make for great book club discussions. I don’t think the book is about what the publishers want you to think it’s about. They, like Natalie, are lying to you.

If you think you’d like to read it, you can grab your copy here.

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