Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Yesteryear,' by Caro Claire Burke

The Book Review - The New York Times

The New York Times Book Review dives into the buzzy debut novel 'Yesteryear' by Caro Claire Burke, exploring its themes of performance, tradition, and identity through the story of a 'trad wife' who time-travels to 1855. The hosts and a guest discuss the book’s polarizing reception, narrative structure, and cultural commentary. The episode blends spoiler-light discussion with a later spoiler-fille

Key takeaways

• The novel uses time travel to critique performative traditionalism.
• Readers are deeply divided—some call it revelatory, others call it lazy.
• The book examines gender roles through both past and present lenses.

Transcript preview

Friends, Romans, Romans, countrymen, book club has convened. Hello and welcome to the Book Review. I'm M. J. Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review and the host of the Book Review book club. Today I am with... I'm Juana Kateeb. I'm an editor, a newsletter writer here at the Book Review. Thank you for joining us and I'm also with... Jen Harlan. I'm also an editor and a columnist at the Book Review. I'm also an editor and a columnist at the book review. I'm This week we are doing our long anticipated yesteryear showdown. You know the saying Curiosity killed the cat? In this case I feel like curiosity chose the book club book because yester year is without a doubt the buzziest book of the year so far. It has been on the bestseller list at the time of this recording for 10 weeks. It was already a Good Morning America book pick. It's already a good morning America book club pick. It's already been option for a movie starring and they're just anecdotally for the readers and my life just around they're always asking me if you read yes to year what do you think about it is this true for you to yes undeniable every single event I feel like I've been to in the last two months someone has yes has brought this book up and the other fun thing about it is awesome curious if this is true for you to everyone's divided about it yes I've heard people love this book and talk about how much it unpacked thematically and other people like viscerally. Yes. Which I do think is interesting given the divisiveness of the subject matter also you know there are a lot of I've met a lot of angry women angry men and angry non-binary folks about this book and also people who are like this is the greatest most revelatory thing I have ever read. For me that just made me so curious if I were to read it where would I land so therefore I have to read it and I feel like both have talked about it independently wanting to in the office wanting to read it as well. It's been a long time I think since at least I've seen a book that is so clearly the favorite of the moment you know there's a time where like I could not get on the subway without seeing yesterday year on every single trip. It's just like hearing how kind of omnipresent it was I thought why not. Yeah. I feel like we've been talking among ourselves recently about there's a tier of book that we feel like everyone is talking like everyone is talking about everyone is talking about on like in the book world and then there's a book that everyone everywhere is talking about and I feel like yesteryear has definitely ascended to that kind of second realm I've had friends and family members and baristas and everyone is is talking and not just reading and interested in this book but then interested in talking about it. And so because of that we're like, a book everyone is reading and interested in talking about a book that we are curious about and don't know where we'll land that is a book club. I feel like this is a conversation that I would want and would be having with both of you anyway. It's just that we're doing it with microphones. But before we dig into the book I just want to share my typical admin notes up top. First there will be spoilers in this episode. However, we know people are still coming to this book on their own time and the journey of this novel is part of it. So to keep this conversation accessible, the first half of this podcast will be spoiler light. We're going to do some set up details, we'll talk about characters, we'll talk about like teasers of stuff as what sets the story in motion, but we will save the big reviews, any big twists, any of that stuff. And there are big twists in this one. We will save that to the second half of the conversation, which will be spoiler filled. So choose your own adventure based on what you want to know. The second note is at the end of the episode we will reveal our July Book Club Book, so stay with us to the end to find out what we're reading next. And without further ado, can, can, can, can, can someone, can someone, can someone, can someone, can someone, can someone, can someone, can someone, can What is this book yesteryear about? I can take that. So yesteryear is a debut novel by Carol Claire Burke and it is about a woman named Natalie Heller Mills who is a mother of five lives on yesteryear ranch in Idaho with her kind of cowboy husband and she is what I think we would call a trad wife influencer. She has this giant social media following both of people who are obsessed with her and think she's sort of the ideal of American womanhood and also people who hate her and think she's everything that's wrong with American womanhood but can't stop watching her and you very quickly pretty much as soon as you meet her start to see that there are kind of this is a facade this like picture perfect wholesome rustic life is something that she is constructing and performing very deliberately and that there are some cracks and things happening. More than cracks just like huge canions of drama and gorgeous. There, she again, is kind of to trying to project this sort of wholesome back to the land, all natural, good old days vision of life, but she has modern appliances, which are hidden tastefully behind cabinet doors. She has two nannies and a producer and a bunch of farmhands. They use pesticides in their crops. Most of her, a lot of her merges not made in America, much less by her. And her family, the family she married into is unthinkable rich. Yes, her. Her husband. the scion of this incredibly wealthy family. His father is this conservative politician. His mother is this perfectly quaffed woman with a pill addiction. So everyone's got some secrets and things they're hiding. And then pretty soon into the book, Natalie wakes up one morning. She is in her farmhouse, but it has somehow and she has somehow been transported to 1855, which is the year when the house is built. So that means no nannies, no fridge, no fridge, no running water. no electricity, different kids, and she has no idea how she got there or what is going on. And the book from there sort of flashes back and forth between Natalie's upbringing, you find out more about her childhood being raised in the evangelical church by a single mom with her sister. She eventually ends up at Harvard and has kind of a difficult time adjusting there and then meets Caleb who will become her husband, drops out of school and then how she sort of constructed this life. for herself. We follow her backstory while also being very in this present moment as she's trying to figure out what in timesian parlance what on earth is going on. Can I just say when I heard the premise of this book like chills I was so excited. It's so good. Just short version tried wife gets sent back to the past can she actually do it? Yeah. I'm in. Causeplay becomes real life. It's a brilliant setup. Totally. I have a follow up question. We've already mentioned this term many times, Tradwife. What is that? Can I say my definition, what my understanding is, because I feel like I have a rudimentary one and I want you to educate me, fill me in. So a Tradwife is just someone who is a woman who is imitating traditional values and traditional living. So it's like we don't use modern appliances, we don't use modern amenities or food, we make everything from scratch by ourselves. For me, the tried wife that I was most familiar with was Nara Smith who was like, yeah, my kids were craving nerds and so I like grew my own sugar. Like this hot tub. So I ground my meat and made a sausage all while wearing a fabulous ball gown. And yeah, so for me, my understanding was that it was like a tick-tock trend basically. But it's more than that and what do I need to know? I think you have a good handle. on the basics. Your understanding is my understanding. I'm oddly fascinated about the tension between the practical reality for a lot of these trad wives I think is that they end up being the breadwinners. They're business women whether you like it or not. They are running a show. They are running their working moms. They are working moms. Yeah. And for something that originated out of the idea that women wanted that these women wanted to return to traditional values. They are ones that's quote unquote simpler life or like you know return to a lifestyle that harks back to like you know 50s or earlier actually it's not quite bad you still can't really do it and and also I think unsurprisingly these women have become a total lightning rod for a lot of people and kind of a Rorschach test right like your feelings about Tradwives I think can say so much about your feelings about fill in the blank. So this is the milieu that we are diving into with this book. That's our setup. Now I'm just curious, I want the vibe check, I want the drama of opinion. I want to know people are divided about this book. Did you or did you not like this book? I'm going to start that level. Thumbs up, thumbs down. I did not like it. But, but. Interesting. I also read it probably in 12 hours. not wait to get further along because I love the premise. I love the premise but almost everything I learned from the story felt like the laziest possible narrative choice. Lazy because obvious or lazy because I'm fighting with myself about this you know because on the one hand I'm like realistically we should just like Occam's razor it like the most likely explanation is probably the one is the case. But I don't know. I wanted the screws to be a little tighter on this book. I think this sort of gets to my main feeling about the book, which is A, I will say I had a great time. I read this basically in 24 hours. I could not put it down. I was inhaling it. Like when they give you like the giant bucket of popcorn at the movie and you're just eating and eating and suddenly you look down and the previews aren't even over and there's nothing left in your pocket. Like that's how I felt reading. reading this book. I was like that's how I was and the plot which is a complete roller coaster and also by the narrative voice which I found like from the jump you can see the darkness there's a moment in like the first few pages where she's going to see the chickens on their farm she calls when the camera is rolling she calls my ladies or the ladies and she's like I love to I like to stroke their silky necks let them peck softly at the feet in my cuffed palms and then the next paragraph is we'd be killing them soon in the darkness my mouth watered what is going on with this woman but I'm here for it. So much of what I found really compelling about it is about this idea of performance and the public expectations particularly for traditional gender roles, both for women, which we see mostly through Natalie, but also through her mom and her mother-in-law and her sister, and for men, which we see, especially with her husband Caleb, who goes from at one point being this very sweet guy who wants to be a kindergarten teacher because he loves hanging out with kids. and then get sucked into this kind of my asthma of online conspiracy theories and is trying to perform this very particular version of maleness, particularly American maleness, and then there's a moment later in the book when she's in the present moment where we meet her when they're married and they have these kids, she's like he never plays with the kids anymore. Like I see him maybe think about it and then he doesn't. And there's something really sad about watching these two people and many of the people around them have these boxes they're trying to fit themselves in and trying to sort of navigate how much of this is what I really want, how much of this is what I think I'm supposed to want. That flip that you just mentioned that he wants to be a kindergarten teacher but doesn't play with the kids is the inverse of what Natalie is dealing with in that he is like I will do this domestic thing for work but I will not do it in my home and Natalie is like I will do this home thing but I will make it work. that conflation is really fascinating. Oh, I think very subtle. I think where it's started to lose me or where I have some gripes and I think maybe part of why people are having such divergent responses and experiences to this is I don't know that I think I wish that Carol Claire Burke had a little bit of a firmer grasp on who Natalie is. There are moments where she seems to be very calculated and smart and like in control and then moments where she seems totally at sea and mystified and not at all in control and which is not to say people can't be in both of the states at once but I felt like I got sort of a less and less clear beat on who she was as the book went on and things started to get a little messy as it went along. It is a debut novel and I feel especially for a debut I'm like this is an incredible idea and I feel like she mostly pulls it off. there are some ways in which it is, you know, debut noveling. I love that it sounds like you two are saying similar things but have landed at different places in your evaluation. Like good concept, inhaled it, one person was like, I was fine with it, did you want you? Not fine with it, but also fine with it enough to be here. You know, like I'm not gonna die on my sword about this, but okay, but M.J. What do you think? Well, before we get to me, I have a special guest, I have a special guest. I want to hear about. Is it a trad one? Oh my God. Natalie joins us for us. No, it is our engineer Maddie who number one is just incredible but then two after our recordings here we are always chatting and I'm like Maddie what were you reading for your book club and you're always reading the most interesting things and last month I asked you and you're like we're reading yester year. Welcome Maddie. Thank you. But my book club was kind of just as split as this one, which is so it's so interesting. It's like another point in the data. I love data. Women in STEM. Yeah, exactly. I feel like I was really conflicted as well. For me what I really liked is when it got to the twist, it was something that I did not expect. So I was surprised, which I appreciated. But I kind of