🩷🩷🩷🩷 (4 Hearts)

Everyone has an opinion about the summer’s most talked-about novel. Here’s mine.

The Conversation in a Nutshell

Here is the quick version of the public reaction: Readers and reviewers largely agreed that Yesteryear has a brilliant premise and is nearly impossible to put down. The Boston Globe praised its combination of fast-paced suspense and sharp social satire.

The disagreement is about what the novel ultimately says. Some readers saw a biting critique of influencer culture, curated domesticity, and the impossible expectations placed on women. Others argued that it portrays an intentionally fraudulent version of a tradwife rather than seriously considering women who sincerely choose traditional roles. Critics at Vox and The Guardian also questioned aspects of its treatment of politics, motherhood, mental health, disability, and trauma.

Then there is Natalie herself and that ending. Is she a hypocrite, a victim, a savvy businesswoman, a deeply flawed mother, or all of those things at once? Is the novel criticizing the systems surrounding her or punishing its female protagonist? Readers could not agree, which is exactly why The Washington Post called it “the summer’s must-discuss book.”

That is the conversation surrounding the book. Here is where I landed.

Let Women Build the Lives They Choose

Before Yesteryear, I had never heard of the tradwife movement. Maybe I had been living under a rock. Mostly, I think I had just been out here working hard and trying to be a woman who makes all the different pieces of life work.

Once I learned about it, I found the concept fascinating. I also think the entrepreneurial side of the tradwife movement is really cool. If a woman has genuinely chosen a traditional role for herself and figures out how to turn that life into an empire, a business, and a money-making machine, I am happy for her. I think that is awesome.

To be clear, I am not celebrating systems that restrict women or suggest that there is only one correct way to live. What I find compelling is a woman taking the life she has chosen and turning it into influence, independence, and economic power.

Being a woman in America is really, really hard. It is hard across tax brackets, backgrounds, careers, family structures, and political beliefs, although it is undeniably harder for women who come from chronically disadvantaged backgrounds and face additional systemic barriers. That deserves an entire post of its own.

Because womanhood is already so difficult, I have very little interest in judging another woman who has found a life that works for her. Traditional wife, working mother, stay-at-home mother, single woman, business owner, caregiver, career woman, or some constantly shifting combination of those roles: live your best life.

That is part of why I saw Natalie differently than some readers did. I saw her as a businesswoman. I saw a woman stepping in to take care of her family when her husband could not get his shit together. She recognized the power of her own image, intelligence, and story, and she used those things to create something enormously successful.

I did not read Yesteryear as an invitation to hate tradwives. I read it as a commentary on how absurdly difficult it is to be a successful woman in America and how many impossible choices women are expected to navigate along the way.

Be ambitious, but not threatening. Be devoted, but do not lose yourself. Be beautiful, but make it look effortless. Be maternal, but never overwhelmed. Be independent, but never selfish. Whatever path you choose, someone will be waiting to tell you that you chose incorrectly.

I think Caro Claire Burke captured that absurdity brilliantly.

I also believe she wanted us to talk about it. She wanted women to converse, disagree, and debate these questions in the public sphere. Exploring difficult ideas and asking big questions about society can only be a good thing, as long as we approach those conversations respectfully and remain open to experiences different from our own.

I did not take offense to this book as a woman, and I did not celebrate the suffering of a woman either. I read it as brilliant entertainment. What a hook. What an ending. For so much of the book, I kept wondering, “How is this possibly going to end?” I was completely invested in finding out.

More than anything, I enjoyed the conversation the author created. Books are competing with streaming services, social media, podcasts, news, work, family, and a thousand other demands for our attention. Any novel that manages to break into mainstream culture and make people talk has accomplished something extraordinary.

That does not mean everyone must agree with it or interpret it in the same way. It means the book should be read, celebrated, questioned, discussed, and happily debated.

Yesteryear did not give us a simple answer about the right way to be a woman. It gave us something far more interesting: a reason to keep talking about the question.

One final point, and this is firmly in spoiler territory: We may never agree about Natalie, tradwives, feminism, or that ending, but surely we can all agree that Caleb was an asshole and the adult children were complicit in abusing a woman experiencing a severe mental-health crisis.

Whatever Yesteryear began as, it ultimately became a story about mental health. It showed how a vulnerable woman’s reality could be manipulated, how her illness could be used against her, and what happens when the people who should protect someone choose control, cruelty, or silence instead. That may be the most disturbing and important conversation the book leaves behind.