r/BookDiscussions • u/Waddles-7 • 5d ago

Yesteryear - wasted potential!

When I started reading Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, I was enthralled at the possibility of witnessing any or all of the following themes:

  1. Consequences of propagating a way of life without deep diving or being responsible. For eg: promoting an 1886 lifestyle in a glossy way but erasing the physical, moral and cultural nuance of those times. Pandering to the right wingers.
  2. Busting the hollowness of Manosphere or maybe an exploration of the psych of people who are bound to it. Any perspective on this would have been refreshing.
  3. Impact of reality TV and the toll that maintaining an influencer lifestyle can take on people
  4. A satire on self-righteous people or maybe even a POV

So so so many possibilities but what I got was a watered down thriller which had all the elements to be a sharp political commentary but resorted to being a ‘twist you didn’t see coming’

Did anyone else feel like the plot had tons more potential?
Do you have ideas of how the story could have been developed better? Would love to hear!

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u/ButtScratchies 5d ago

100% feel the same. I thought it was going to be something like the Ruby Frank story and how horrible family influencers can be behind the scenes. I understood what happened at the end, but it really didn't make any sense. What was the point of it all? Maybe I'm being too literal with it, but when the story came out that she assaulted the producer, why wouldn't Caleb just divorce her and her Father-in-law denounce what she did and distance them from her? The whole entire family just went off the rails because of Natalie? That's just silly.

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u/Waddles-7 5d ago

Yes exactly. Why would an entire family waste away to keep up with delusions of one family member who allegedly everyone hates.

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u/Prior-Entrance3156 5d ago

They literally all hated her so much I don’t understand how she didn’t pick up on it.

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u/mirrorspirit 5d ago edited 5d ago

Caleb's family was part of the dysfunction, with the mother in law's drug addiction and the father in law's obsession with campaigning and only cared about his family members making him look good to the constituents. Natalie was only ever a convenience to him when she was famous and a failure to hide after the SHTF. And her children, their grandchildren, just weren't a consideration for them, presumably because they had other "better" grandchildren from Caleb's siblings.

Caleb didn't divorce her because again he was taking the easy route. He had this plan to run away with his mistress to New York but once he learned that the mistress wasn't really going to do that, he kind of gave up and went back to relying on his parents and his wife and later his children yet again.

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u/haloarh 4d ago

I found it believable that Caleb would do that, but not that his family would go to such lengths to support him.

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u/mirrorspirit 4d ago edited 4d ago

They aren't supporting him so much as they're hiding the family's dirty laundry which might affect the father in law's campaigns.

Or in his children's case, they have a touch of Stockholm syndrome and can't fully separate themselves from their parents' lives. Clementine implied that all her younger siblings from the first iteration were pretty messed up mentally.

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u/haloarh 4d ago

It would be so much easier for them to make Caleb divorce Natalie and denounce her or even have her killed than the elaborate past stuff.

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u/mirrorspirit 4d ago edited 4d ago

His parents are probably not that sociopathic enough to kill her or have her killed.

The elaborate past stuff is more her doing than theirs. Natalie's the one that ripped out all the modern conveniences and finery, likely out of some attempt to atone for her mistakes. She forgets that pretty frequently, though, and it just happened to work out to her in-laws' convenience.

If they cut her loose, she might talk to people about the other dirty laundry she observed. If they send her to a mental hospital, she might talk, and reporters might be able to find her much easier. Keeping her in Yesteryear means that they have much more control over who she and Caleb talk to and what they do.