I finished Yesteryear last night, and the longer I sit with it, the more I realize how multi-layered it is and I'm just dying to put all my thoughts in order to make sense of it all.

First things first, we have Natalie, our possibly most unreliable narrator ever, who, as the story goes on, we recognize is far more unreliable than she seemed from the get-go. We're privy to her inner monologue when she calls Doug to get her out of the mess she put herself in with Shannon, and see for the first time that her inner monologue wasn't so "inner" after all... I originally thought this was when Natalie truly started veering off the deep end, but that theory went to shit when we got to see Clementine's footage of Natalie in the car post-Target trip, ranting out loud about her high school acquaintance, Vanessa, which was also originally presented to us as Natalie's inner voice. This puts into perspective Natalie's entire point-of-view and whether we can trust anything at all that she's relayed to us from the very first page. Did Reena, her Harvard roommate, really punch Natalie in the face? Was Reena truly the instigator of the physical violence? Did Natalie escalate the situation with more violence? Can we trust Natalie's perspective that Reena lied about the night she brought a boy over whom she claimed raped her, knowing that Natalie herself felt violated by Reena having sex in their shared room while harbouring immense resentment towards Reena? What really happened when Natalie blacked out and found herself choking Shannon? Was there a sexual element that Natalie couldn't admit to herself, whether it was based solely on a desire to dominate Shannon after feeling like she stripped Natalie of her authority or a repressed sexual desire for women? Is there more to Natalie's hatred of sex with Caleb, perhaps that she has indeed repressed her true sexuality? Was there something deeper in Natalie's mention of feeling like a man and saying she should've been born as one? We'll never know, because Natalie never gave herself the time and space to ponder these questions herself.

Natalie landed at Harvard with a somewhat open mind. She attempted to get out of her comfort zone that first night by joining Reena in the pre-drink, where she proceeded to get made fun of and be singled out by the girls on her very first attempt to branch out, feeling like a lab rat being studied by women who looked down on her and saw her as both a victim of the patriarchy and a tool perpetuating it herself. I can't help but wonder, if Natalie had actually made a genuine friend at school who didn't make assumptions about her from the moment they laid eyes upon her, could her life have gone in a very different direction? Reena et al's treatment of her pushed her even further along her Good Christian Woman path, and I think one of the many points of this book is to showcase that the way we treat people who hold different beliefs to our own causes us to further silo ourselves in echo chambers, making it even harder for us to "see the light."

This caused Natalie to begin her devotion to hating the Angry Woman... The irony being that Natalie herself is the archetype and blueprint of it but lacks the self-awareness to notice her own hypocrisy. She hates Reena because (from what she tells herself) she assumes Reena will sell her soul, denounce a godly life, and neglect her family in order to pursue a career, meanwhile Natalie ends up doing just that, and more. She believes she's superior to the Angry Women in her phone, yet spends her own free time hate-scrolling random Instagram accounts and those belonging to Reena and Vanessa, judging them and putting them down incessantly. She blames corporatism for women not being present with their children while being money-hungry herself—marrying Caleb solely because he's rich, underpaying all her staff, spending all her time trying to monetize Instagram because that's not really a career, right? She can still be a Good Christian Woman if the way she makes money isn't via a real job! She neglects her kids in the moments she's supposed to be present with them and has them primarily be raised by nannies. She holds so much space for these Angry Women and obsesses over them constantly while demonizing them for doing the same to her. Natalie forfeited her chance to get a degree from Harvard in order to pursue the path of the Good Christian Woman, but despises every second of it and can't look at herself honestly and admit she's jealous she never had the strength to break free of her self-imposed shackles and pursue a life that actually made her happy... Or admit the reason she hates the Angry Women so much is because they never shackled themselves the way Natalie convinced herself she needed to in order to attain salvation. She sees herself in them and she hates them for it, but not as much as she hates herself for it.

Many are quick to make Caleb out to be the ultimate villain in the story, but I think that's a very reductive way of viewing his story... Men are inherently evil, blah blah blah. Eye roll. Caleb was failed by everyone around him his entire life. He wasn't given a true chance to discover himself, he was ostracized by his own brothers and family for being an embarrassment, he wasn't ever allowed to lean into his "feminine" qualities, as Natalie called them, and was shamed for his lack of traditional masculinity. He wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, and Natalie acted like that was the most horrific possibility. He wanted to do yoga in the mornings on the lawn, and Natalie hated him for it because of the beliefs she held about others' perceptions of him, and by proxy, their perceptions of her. She treated him like an idiot and believed herself to be superior to him, attempted to manipulate him, and was never honest with him both about what she wanted or what she thought. Caleb is just as much a victim of the patriarchy as Natalie, and they both perpetuated it equally. Shannon was the first person Caleb ever encountered who gave him space to be himself and challenged him, and it worked—he stopped believing in the manosphere and right wing conspiracies he was busy filling his head with all day—but Natalie couldn't bear facing the consequences of her actions or losing the Online Natalie persona she convinced herself was real and that Caleb was integral to, so she dragged him down with her. She wasn't solely responsible, of course, as the only out his own father gave him was... Her murder. Since, you know, a Good Christian cannot get a divorce, so murder is the most Godly alternative. By the grace of God, Caleb possessed enough decency to recognize that murdering her would be wrong, and sacrificed his own happiness to fulfill the role of the Good Christian Man to Natalie's Good Christian Woman. His own family put their "Godly image" over Caleb's own happiness, and as a result, he spiralled further down the rabbit hole of hate, conspiracy, and misogyny, because every other door was slammed shut in his face by the people who should have been encouraging him to walk through them. It's easy to say that he should have had the strength to do so himself, but very few people will willingly put themselves in a position to lose absolutely everything in the name of the Right Thing, no matter how much we wish they'd do so anyways.

Natalie finally got what she wanted when she found herself transported "back in time..." A manly, domineering husband who'd slap her into obedience. But of course, she still wasn't happy because she never truly wanted that in the first place. The moment she'd manage to gaslight herself into believing she was content, she'd try to run away or scream that she hated everyone and wanted to know why they kidnapped her. She blamed everyone around her for her unhappiness and failed to recognize her unhappiness was a result of trying to fit herself into a box she never truly wanted to fit into. She exhibits many traits of narcissistic sociopathy and is unable to admit when she's wrong in any capacity, so doubling down despite her own misery was the only option she believed was available to her. The other Good Christian Women in her life, like her mother, all lied to her about this lifestyle leading to true happiness. It was all a facade to one-up the other Good Christian Women peering over and judging them. Natalie couldn't cope with her whole life and set of beliefs being founded on lies, further propelling her into her eventual psychotic break so she wouldn't have to confront the reality of the situation she put herself in, and that she was manipulated to believe was in her best interest.

Natalie is a villain as much as she is a victim. As is Caleb, as is Reena, as is her mother, and so on. Reena finally made it to the top of the TV food chain and decides to interview the mentally unwell Natalie, but for what? She reads the prologue of Mary's book to Natalie—and she's intelligent enough to know that reading such a thing on live television to a woman going through some form of psychosis will likely have no positive impact—before delving into an hour-long spotlight interview, which will ultimately further humiliate Natalie and turn her into more of a laughing stock than she already is. What's the benefit here, and who is benefiting?

I think Yesteryear does a really excellent job of highlighting the nuance in the world around us and the humans living in it, or the lack thereof. We're quick to judge and assume the worst when the truth is that most of us are genuinely acting out what we believe to be in the best interest of the greater good. None of these characters are wholly good or bad, they exist in the space in between, and those of us who refuse to see that and focus on pointing fingers or picking sides are the very people the author is calling out in this book.

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Thoughts on Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke