Review: 3 stars
I chose Yesteryear the way you choose a paperback at an airport: I wanted something fast-paced and easy, a proper summer read. I carried it with me to Hangzhou, China on a family vacation and finished it in two days, reading in the stolen hours before my kids woke up and in the dead of night. On those terms, it delivered.
As a full-time working mom, I found the premise uncomfortably on point. There is a version of the domestic fantasy that tugs at you more than you'd like to admit…what it would be like to fully dedicate yourself to the home, to care for your kids to your utmost capability, to feel confident about every meal you're feeding your family, to have a beautifully decorated home. It's always been slightly out of reach for me, because there are never enough hours in the week. So the tradwife phenomenon has always fascinated me. I've always admired stay-at-home moms, because the real version of that life, where nothing ever goes according to plan, is so much harder than the fantasy.
Natalie Heller Mills, the narrator and protagonist, is a powerful allegory for what happens when you start cosplaying the thing you aspire to be. In performing it, you lose pieces of yourself. The stress of maintaining a constant face, to the world, to your family, to yourself, is enormous. I read her eventual break as the inevitable result: a woman trapped in her own mental prison, completely untethered from reality. The pioneer life, when it finally arrives stripped of the Instagram filter, is fully miserable. That felt like the book's sharpest karma: to live the "authentic" life she was selling, which in reality was built on terrible bread, brutal manual labor and harsh conditions. A version of domesticity with nothing left to photograph.
The book pulled me in easily, and I admired the author's nerve in making Natalie essentially unredeemable: no softening, no rescue. There are genuine surprises tucked in, including the bleak punchline that in the end, it's just Natalie and her husband, Caleb, who have one another, despite everything they lack for each other. Still, for all its momentum, I didn't love it. It's a good light thriller, and a solid recommendation for anyone looking for a fast read. However, it was not the most literary or the most memorable one.