'Yesteryear' Has Everyone Talking—Does It Deliver?

The new novel Yesteryear has an immediately intriguing premise. Natalie Heller Mills, a successful tradwife influencer, wakes up one morning to find herself seemingly transported back to 1855, forced to actually live a “traditional” lifestyle. Buoyed by a viral tweet announcing that Anne Hathaway had already optioned the rights, the book has quickly become a reference point for discourse. Yesteryear is by the writer and podcaster Caro Clarie Burke, and it’s written in the silky, lilting style of MFA-polished prose. That’s not a knock; this is writing that moves quickly, assuredly along, which means that the metaphors are often to be expected. (Natalie compares running her career, marriage, and family to “breastfeeding three babies, seducing three lovers at once.”)