Book Review: Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

This is, I think, the first proper fiction book I've read since school. Not out of principle, just laziness, and possibly a long-standing belief that non-fiction was somehow more virtuous. I picked this one up after hearing Anne Hathaway had bought the film rights, which is not usually how I choose what to read but here we are, easily led as ever.

I was hooked almost immediately. The main character, Natalie, is an insufferable Christian woman, and I mean that as the highest compliment. There's something genuinely gripping about reading a mind that thinks so differently to your own, watching her process college, politics, and family life through a completely different lens than the one I'd normally bring to any of it. It's uncomfortable in the way good fiction should be uncomfortable, not because it's badly written but because it's doing exactly what it set out to do.

I read the whole thing in a week. Could not put it down, could not stop thinking about it between chapters, and actually managed to strain my neck from reading in bed too long. Which feels like a fitting summary of my general physical state at the moment: can't run without tearing a ligament, can't read a book without giving myself an injury either. Feeble, frankly.

What kept me going wasn't just Natalie, it was wanting to know what she'd do next, how the story would turn, whether she'd stay exactly as maddening as she started out. Burke writes with enough clarity that I could picture every character properly in my head without trying, which is rarer than it should be, and now I'm mildly anxious the film won't match what's already sitting in my imagination. It rarely does.

I'm fascinated by American politics generally, and while the book never says the word Trump or anything close to it, I couldn't help picturing the family at the centre of it as thoroughly MAGA. Whether that's intentional on Burke's part or just where my brain went, I'm not entirely sure, but it added a layer I don't think I was supposed to be reading in quite so consciously.

There's also the whole tradwife thread running through it, the aesthetic of "simpler times" that's been circling online for a while now, and Burke takes that fantasy and just keeps turning the dial until it stops being aspirational and starts being unsettling. Which is clever, because it's the exact appeal I don't fully understand but recognise the pull of. I'm also just a sucker for anything set against 19th century generally, the clothes, the manners, the sheer effort that went into keep your female mouth closed, so even without the politics I'd have been fully in for the setting alone.

Would recommend. Would also recommend a neck pillow if you're planning to read it in one sitting, because you probably will.