Yesteryear is everything that's wrong with us

When I put Yesteryear on the checkout counter, the clerk said omg, this book is getting soooo much buzz, I’ve heard it’s soooo good, I’m soooo excited to read it. Deadpan, I said I’m buying it because of all the hate posts. Oh, she said. I’m curious if I’ll hate it for the same reasons, I said. Oh, she said and I laughed. Poor girl, my bad.

First thing I heard about Yesteryear is that the protagonist is unlikeable. Some people said there are no likeable characters in the book but that doesn’t dissuade me. One of the hardest parts of writing a book is character building. Give me a hateworthy character over a flat cardboard character any day of the week, I’m up for it.

A third of the way through, I didn’t hate it yet. I read the criticisms of the historical inaccuracies. The snide little racisms. Meh, whatever. There are racists in the world and there are racists in books. There are people who don’t know history and some of them write books. Duh, Anne Boleyn wasn’t a man stealer. She was stalked and forced to marry the man who send gross letters about touching her tatas. Just saying.

Duckies, actually. He called her tatas her duckies and she had to marry him. The Crucible butchered history, too. Pretended Abigail Williams was old enough to be bopping John Proctor nevermind that she was a child and there was no affair, and what actually happened in Salem was much uglier. Anyway, you get my point. Historical fiction isn’t always accurate. Writers can take liberties with fact.

I can overlook that in the name of good storytelling.

I mean, obvious flaw, she wakes up in the role she was faking and discovers she’s a real trad-wife in 1850 Idaho. Nevermind that the first permanent settlement in Idaho was in 1860. There’d been an attempt at settlement in 1855 by missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but they fled. But sure, a fully functioning farm in 1850 but okay, no worries. I can suspect judgement in the name of a story.

A few chapters in, I wondered if I’d end up writing to disagree with all the people who hated the book. Turns out — no. I just ended up hating it for different reasons.

Major spoiler alerts coming in case you haven’t read it yet and plan to.

Here’s a thing we humans do. We spread out our hate like jam on toast. Like, ever noticed that once you hate someone, they can’t do anything right? I didn’t feel that way until I got to the end of the book and then I hated everything about it.

In the early parts I was impressed with how well she portrayed Natalie as utterly unlikeable. And I say “unlikeable” to avoid using the language I’d use in real life, if you were at my kitchen table. I mean, here’s this trad-wife “social influencer” that wakes up in 1850 living the life of a real trad-wife and I thought hah, what a clever story idea.

I thought I was reading a time-travel novel.

I was not.

People called the ending a “twist.” I don’t call it a twist. It was lazy writing. It was omg, how the f— do I end this story now? Oh wait. She had a psychotic break and doesn’t remember that these are her real kids. Plus, her family was drugging her. Just in case a psychotic break isn’t believable enough. Yeah. Drugged and batshit crazy. Both.

I wanted to throw the book across the room.

So wait. You’re telling me Caleb kept getting her pregnant no matter how insane she was and he knew they weren’t really living in 1850 and didn’t lift a hand to get any help for anyone in the family including the child who clearly needed help?

What is this, Andrea Yates in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village?

Remember Andrea Yates? That woman needed help so desperately but her husband just kept getting her pregnant and going off to work like duh, it’s fine. Just bringing home the bacon, derp, derp because that’s what a man does. Oh, hello Caleb.

Ever watched M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village?

There’s a whole modern world out there and the whole village doesn’t even know. Because don’t go in the forest, out there isn’t safe, only in here is safe. Scare the pants off everyone enough that they won’t dare venture out into the dark scary forest.

All that’s missing in Yesteryear is the scary monster who keeps everyone in the village so they don’t venture out and find out there’s a whole world out there, except it turns out the big bad scary thing is Caleb, the once upon a time weenie.

Caleb, who once wanted to be a kindergarten teacher but didn’t bother to teach his “pioneer” children to read or write. And why? Because his wife’s psychotic break turned him into some whacked doomsday dude who goes hunting for carrots?

Old Caleb, who can suddenly please his wife in bed now that she isn’t emasculating him by earning the money in the family and is confused and dependent on him.

Shut up woman. Slap. Like, what a manosphere dream, yeah?

He beats her and rapes her and won’t call an ambulance when she’s seriously injured but lets their illiterate child stitch it up with muscle sticking out between the stitches nevermind that it’s not 1850 and there’s actual help out there, but good old Caleb is apparently totally fine with all that because he’s the man of the hour now, ugh.

And all the people around them — did they all have psychotic breaks, too?

Because everyone knows and no one says a thing about the fact that those kids can’t read or write and Maeve clearly needs help. The older kids all know because they ran away but they don’t tell. Her mother knows because that’s where the older kids went. His father knows, but he got sick of their shit years ago and bailed on them, which begs the question of where the money comes from because buying twenty years worth of vegetables at Walmart, like what the actual f—?

Which, I guess, explains Mary going out to harvest saffron in an Idaho forest, except for the part about who is paying for it all because saffron isn’t exactly cheap.

Because Caleb the good old 1850’s man’s man (hurr-hurr) can’t put a seed in the ground and figure out how to make it grow food and willingly uses an outhouse.

And then suddenly, oopsie, it’s not really 1850 and she’s just psychotic and they’re all just playing along to humor her or something but they’re not all psycho, just her and the oldest child comes back with papers to take the children away but there was no visit from social services and suddenly Mary is somehow writing a book, nevermind that she couldn’t read or write at seventeen but okay, sure, why not.

And Natalie gets convicted of child abuse because it’s always the woman’s fault, right?

Nevermind the natty little detail that Caleb could have called the whole thing off at anytime, but chose not to. Because he liked living in his manosphere wet dream, I guess? Liked having power over his wife who is no longer emasculating him by earning actual money being a trad-wife faker on the internet? Jesus Christ.

Sometimes, when I finish reading a book, I go for a walk and put it in the little free library a few blocks away. Unless it’s a keeper.

I chucked it in the recycling bin.

This book is everything that’s wrong with us.

I get why it shot to the top of the bestseller charts and stayed there like it was glued.

That’s one of the things that ticks me off. Because omg, trad-wife and trad-wives are trending. Because Ballerina Farm and far right rhetoric about feminism ruining masculinity, and manosphere rhetoric, don’tcha know.

Jump on the hot topic while it’s trending. That’s us.

The algorithm drives everything. Even the books we buy. There’s no freaking break from trending. If it’s trending online, it’s trending at the bookstore, too.

And then Anne Hathaway jumped on the book because it needs to be a movie, because it’s a hot topic and it will sell because it’s timely but we gotta get it to market right now while it’s hot because the whole world is just ‘hot or not’ so it was pushed to market nevermind that it was the first draft and if that doesn’t explain everything you need to know about publishing today, I don’t know what else would.

I thought the book was going to say something poignant about the reality of traditional wives (ie 1850s) vs. social media “trad-wife” garbage.

It could have. It certainly had every opportunity to.

But all it ended up saying is that family is screwed up and it’s all her fault because she’s a freaking psycho crazy bitch.

Four hundred and nineteen years since the first American settlers arrived in Jamestown and the storyline is still the same. She’s crazy.

Women be crazy, don'tcha know?

Tick tock, that shit never changes. So that’s why I hated it.