Yesteryear (2*)

In Hollywood they call it an "elevator pitch," and this one was irresistible, good enough to overcome my snobbery about reading novels before they are classics, well-reviewed by critics I respect or recommended by literary friends:  a "trad wife" influencer finds herself time-travelled back to the mid-19th century.   

Author Caro Claire Burke seduced me further with her even-handedness, declaring, in a New York Times interview, “We were all sold a bill of false goods, and that’s true for conservative women and it’s true for liberal women.  The point of the book is not that one wins.” 

Actually, no one wins in this cynical, borderline offensive exercise in comeuppance which might just as well have been penned by one of the "angry women" who comment on narrator Natalie Heller Mills's Instagram account. Yesteryear brings to mind a self-help book I had to promote when I worked in publishing which suggested "we criticize in others our own short comings."

Natalie, a Christian homebody living her best life on a "farm" in Utah, intuitively understands the dynamics of social media.

The goal of an influencer is not to be lovable, and it is not to be unbearable. The goal is to be both at once. In other words: addicting.

But Natalie also expresses her profound contempt for the human race from the very beginning:

A space must always look lived-in for someone to want to live in it. This is a completely obvious notion, when you take a moment to really think about it, but most people don’t take a moment to really think about anything. Most people are morons.

Caleb, her husband and the ineffectual black sheep of a wealthy family whose patriarch eventually runs for president on a manosphere platform, doesn't meet her expectations either.

My husband was like a farm animal, or a very expensive suede couch. Constant work. Diminishing returns. It required relentless sacrifice and impeccable discipline to give your life over to the care and management of a man like that.

Worse yet, Caleb can't even get it up.  Burke establishes an ugly parallel between this shortcoming and her attitude about his desire to teach children.

A substitute kindergarten teaching job was the professional version of a fully flaccid penis. Humiliation incarnate.

Yet his lack of desire doesn't get in the way of procreation:  the couple have so many kids that I lost track.  Burke uses far more ink to develop Reena, a "modern," childless woman just as alienating as Natalie even though she mostly disappears after they room together briefly in their first year of college.  It turns out that Burke's equanimity boils down to thoroughly negative depictions of both her female protagonists, regardless of their politics.

If you want to spend time with characters as unlikable and unedifying as these, be my guest.  And yes, I'm aware that it's sexist to insist women must be likable but I wouldn't be any more sympathetic to men this fucked up, either.  Even worse, using mental illness as the cornerstone of Yesteryear's structure seems like a bait and switch as unbelievable as it is unforgivable.