Grab a glass of raw milk and join Junebug and the Reader's Advisory gang of librarians as they tackle Caro Claire Burke's scorching hot tradwife novel Yesteryear. Find us on Intstagram at @ReadersAdvisoryRoc

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Welcome back to Reader's Advisory, Rochester's Book Club.

We're kind of liars here.

Right?

Right from the outside.

This is episode three.

We lied big time.

This is really episode two, because we had.

The first one was episode zero.

So we said that we're gonna, like, preview the summer reading, doing all that kind of stuff.

We were gonna talk about Jurassic Park.

Jurassic park, which we will eventually.

We're liars and we're bad, but we're liars.

Yeah, we're liars and bad at math.

That's true.

We kind of had an exciting idea.

Yeah.

You want to tell us?

Yeah.

So if you are in and around libraries, have eyes, have been online, have watched tv, have ears as well, you will have heard of Carol Clare Burke's debut novel, Yesteryear.

It is a Good Morning America book pick.

It is pretty good cover, I would say.

I like it as a cover.

And so we decided to read this one instead because right now the hold list at the library is 400 plus 4 physical copies.

792 Holds on 50 copies on Libby.

642 Holds on the audiobook on Libby.

So this is kind of the biggest book of the year, I would say.

Yeah.

This kind of thing happens usually, like once a year.

Once a year.

Right.

Where there's just one.

One big fireball of a book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shout out to Robin Roberts.

Good job.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, to the point where this book.

The sticker.

The book club sticker is printed on the COVID Yeah.

It's not just a.

It's not a sticker.

I'm calling it.

It's not slapped on there.

No.

This is big time.

They're endorsing this book.

People are returning the book to the library.

It's.

There's a lot of hot takes about it.

So we had to do this, right.

Yeah, we did.

We did.

So.

So we're liars.

But we apologize.

We think it's.

I think a lot of people are out there are gonna be reading this book.

So we have.

Stop whining.

Thank you.

We thank you.

We're responsive to the needs of our listeners.

Culturally relevant.

Culturally relevant.

Thank you, Junebug.

You're welcome.

On that note, June bug, shall we reintroduce ourselves?

I'm Jim.

I'm a librarian in the Rochester area.

Who the hell are you guys?

I'm Robin, also a public librarian.

I'll give you that.

Yes.

Public librarian in the Rochester area.

I work with adults.

Grown ups, Rachel.

I am a public librarian in the OWL system.

So in the Neighboring system.

Exotic.

Very, very.

And I'm Rachel or Junebug, and I am a school librarian in the Rochester region.

All right.

Very good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this, I think, is a fun way to get going.

Wuthering Heights was fantastic.

That was Junebug racing.

That's the Junebug show.

That's my favorite book.

One of my favorite books.

I quite liked it.

That was a fantastic conversation.

I also just had a lot more to say.

I could have gone on for like four hours just talking about that book.

I'm so annoyed.

Maybe we should just be the Wuthering Heights podcast.

I could keep going.

Okay, we'll circle back.

She'll do a season.

That's corporate speak, right?

Yeah, we'll circle back in a very real way.

We actually will.

Don't worry.

Okay, fair enough.

Rachel will make connections between every single thing.

I'll find a way.

And Wuthering heightens.

I'll find a way.

This is her through line.

Yep.

All right, so this book, not only the holds, it's already been optioned for a film.

Yeah.

Starring Anne Hathaway.

Our queen Anne Hathaway.

Can you believe it was optioned two years ago?

It was optioned.

Yeah.

She.

Within the acknowledgments that she talked about pre publication.

I didn't notice that.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Which happens.

That does happen.

But like 2 years pre is wild to me.

Yeah.

All right, well, shall I read the.

The book?

Yeah, give us a.

Give us a.

Give us an overview.

I feel like Orson Welles or something.

Here, do it.

Are you ready?

Natalie Heller Mills is a traditional American woman.

A beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers.

Her farmhouse is charmingly rustic.

Her husband a handsome cowboy.

Her six children, each more delightful than the last.

So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes?

Her kitchen is hiding industrial grade fridges and ovens, and her husband is the heir to a political dynasty.

What Natalie's followers don't know won't hurt them.

And the angry women, that's all caps.

Angry woman.

The privileged Ivy League coastal elite haters who call her an anti feminist iconoclast.

They're sick with jealousy because Natalie isn't simply living the good life.

She's building an empire.

Until one morning, she wakes up in a life that isn't hers.

Her home, her husband, or children.

They're all familiar, but wrong.

Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering Fire rather than electricity.

Her children are dirty and strange and her soft handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer.

Just yesterday, Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram and now she's expected to haul firewood and hand wash clothes until her fingers bleed.

Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show?

Could it really be time travel?

Is she being tested by God?

By Satan?

When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things.

This is not her beautiful life and she must escape by any means possible.

A gripping, electrifying novel that is darkly funny as it is frightening.

Yesteryear is a gimlet eyed look at tradition, fame, faith and the grand performance of womanhood.

I'm hooked.

Yep.

Also love the line, her children were dirty and strange.

Yeah, Aren't they all?

Didn't catch that the first time.

Aren't they all?

Yes, they are.

Yes, they are.

Little stinkers.

Yep.

So what a book this was.

And just a warning to all the listeners out there, we will be spoiling the crap out of this book.

So if you haven't read it yet and you want to read it, you know, come back to this.

Come back, come back because we are.

Absolutely spoiling the crap out of it.

I'm just going to inject for a second.

I. I'd read a little bit about this.

The description that was written there is.

It's almost like it's plagiarized from the Reed Drummond story.

I don't know if you're all y' all familiar with Reed Drummond.

Explain this.

This, this is like.

That is 75% exactly.

The reed Drummond the pioneer woman story.

Oh yeah.

She was early in blogging was big and was.

This was like when blogging mattered and became famous with blogging.

And her husband, I think she had always referred to him as like, like the marble man or something like that.

Yeah, I remember that.

You know, his family owns one of the biggest ranching operations in the United States and now she has an empire including Food Network TV show, a lot of cookbooks, many of them, some of the greatest, you know, greatest selling cookbooks.

My mom has a crock pot, a.

Destination like a cafe and boutique stores, like has turned this into a giant economy.

And that description is 75% exactly the same story minus the time travel as far as we know.

Yeah.

And she does note, she injects in a later point that the mommy blogger stuff is, is part of it too.

Right.

So very much so.

That's There's a lot in here.

We'll get into that.

The Duggars, probably.

Yeah.

Very Ballerina Farms.

There's so much.

Very TLC show coded.

I don't know if you guys ever saw welcome to Plathville, but it's very.

That as well, because it's like the Duggars are extremely, like, they're part of, like a religious group, an organization that's like an extreme version of, I don't know, fundamentalist, something.

Shout out to the quiverfuls.

Shout out to the quiverfuls.

Whereas.

Whereas this one, it's like almost a bit more agnostic, but we'll get into that, too.

So should we first spoil things?

Go ahead.

Should we.

Okay, so let's sort of go over the.

Just sort of the.

The basic outline.

Right.

So who we have here is Natalie Heller Mills.

She went to.

She grew up in rural Idaho.

Correct.

Am I correct in remembering that?

Rural Idaho with a single mother and a sister.

Correct in that, too.

Right.

Okay.

Couldn't remember her dad.

Single mother is.

Specifically.

Because her dad is no longer with us, which is.

Their mom is deliberately making it sound like she died.

Yeah, but he didn't die.

So the story that Natalie grows up with is that he cheated on her mother and then left them.

Right, right.

Thank you for refreshing me on that.

But.

So Natalie's older sister never really amounted to much.

I have a fantastic quote in my notes about Natalie, or, I'm sorry, Natalie's sister as a.

As an adult and what she has come to.

But Natalie gets into Harvard.

She goes to Harvard, and she has a roommate who she hates, Rena Magliotti.

Rena Magliotti.

The one and only.

And she kind of becomes really jaded against anybody who isn't as religious as she is, as conservative as she is.

And she meets this nice young man named Caleb, and they go on a date.

And on that first date, she says, I think it would be awesome if in our future we could have a farm.

And he says, that sounds nice.

He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, but he decides that basically from there they decide that what they're going to do with their life is be married and have a bunch of kids, which is fine.

That's totally fine.

But then once they get married and Natalie finds out that Caleb doesn't really have any ambition or any ability to do anything, she decides to then actually get the farm.

Asks his father, who is a US Senator.

Yeah, right.

Who has run for president twice before.

And is.

Doug.

Doug.

Very Mitt Romney coded.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

For $5 million to buy a farm.

And he gives her $5 million and the only thing she has to do is have more children.

She has one child at that point and kind of doesn't seem to like it very much.

Like being a mother very much.

And he gives Caleb something to do, which he's kind of the black sheep of their family.

Yeah.

He needs to do something.

Yeah.

He's a little lost.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I ran into Romney on an elevator once.

Ew.

Really?

Yep.

Wow.

In the Capitol.

Did he look as fake as he looked?

I didn't know it was him.

My friend had to lean over and whisper to me after we immediately got out of the elevator that that was the senator from Utah.

And I was like, who?

I like that she said Romney.

And I was like, oh, the guy who lost to Obama.

I know that guy.

He's got that perfect.

The morning.

Yeah.

The guy that put his dog on the roof rack.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

That's several conservatives.

I was going to say.

It's not the guy who dropped on roof rack.

Yes.

Bear cub off in Central Park.

So, you know, it's not that bad.

It's not.

There's.

There's standards, I guess.

Cut a whale head off and put it on top of his minivan.

So, you know, could always be worse.

Yeah, it could always be worse.

Shout out to Captain Ahab.

Yeah.

So.

So then, you know, it sort of goes from there.

She decides to become an influencer because Caleb really isn't good at being a farmer.

They're starting to lose money, so she becomes an influencer and one day.

Wait, what does he farm anyway?

He's like Stardew valuing it.

Right.

He like gets the sprouts.

What's the parsnips?

He's parsnips.

He's parsnips and like three chickens.

And can we talk about, like, how many cows they end up killing?

They go through, like, they name all their cows five or six.

And they go through like five or six cows in like two years.

Yeah.

These cows are just.

They just keep dying.

It's like, what are you giving to the cow?

What are you killing them with?

Yeah.

You know, as a farm animal lover myself, the.

There's a lot of animal deaths in this, like around the chickens, but the cows too.

It's really.

It's kind of disturbing.

It is disturbing.

Which is intentional, I'm sure you're neglect.

Yeah, yeah.

But so then she becomes an influencer.

She becomes really famous.

Overnight, people start wanting a lot from her.

She hires some staff.

She specifically gets famous because her husband is involved in the manosphere and has been talking her up.

And one of the biggest.

Manosphere.

I don't remember if he was a podcast or live streamer.

Like a Joe Rogan type.

Joe Rogan type picks up on her and because of her husband talking about them and.

And starts promoting her as, like, the ideal of femininity.

Oh, my gosh, she's so ideal.

So then she gets, like, I don't know, like, a million followers within a few months or a year or something like that.

Yeah.

There's a scene where she's looking at her phone and it's like she puts down.

She picks back up 2,000 more followers.

Yes, yes.

It's like it's just exponentially growing like that.

She goes from 1,000 to, I think, 300,000 overnight, like, very fast, because the.

Guy who promoted her has, like, 10 million followers or something like that.

So, you know, there's the insidiousness of social media already starting there, of just, like, she sees it growing, and she had worked really hard to get, like, a thousand followers, and then it starts growing, and she's, like, desperate for more, desperate for more.

So then she has to start hiring nannies and a producer, and she starts to not really pay that much attention to her children, who she didn't pay that much attention to before.

And she didn't really seem to like being a mother before, but now she.

All she wants to do is focus on her career, which, you know, it's not a bad thing to have a career.

Right.

She doesn't know why.

It's her husband, but it's an old version of her husband.

There's children there, but they're not her children.

It's her house, but it's not her house.

She was pregnant.

She's no longer pregnant.

Exactly.

And she is just like, what happened?

Why am I here?

She tries to run away.

She gets caught in a bear trap, and she has to come back and her oldest daughter has to.

This was so gross.

She has to sew up the giant wound on her leg with, like, a regular needle.

Yeah.

I'm imagining, like, basic yarn.

Right?

Like red heart yarn.

Yes.

They were talking, too, about, like, the muscle being on the outside of the slit.

Yeah.

She's like, I haven't seen that before.

It was repulsive.

It was very gross.

Writing's good because it makes you cringe Actually, it's painful to think about.

I could still see it in my mind.

Yeah.

But I will say the writing, like, there are some very compelling lines.

A couple that I would like to read later just because they're so good.

Please.

But so then it goes on from there.

She continues being in this place.

She seems to, like, brainwash herself into liking it for some reason and into feeling like this is what God has told her to do.

Because at one point she gets, like.

She has, like, a weird moment where she thinks God is, like, telling her this is her destiny and this is what she's supposed to be doing.

Speaking to her 3.

Speaking to her oldest child.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

It's an impressive mental gymnastics routine.

It is.

It is.

And then a couple.

She.

She has four children in this world, I believe.

Is that correct?

Four children.

But then they're, you know, doing their normal things.

And then a couple of guys from the neighboring farm come over to help with some.

Some fencing.

And she stares at them because she doesn't know where they're from.

She doesn't know where they're from.

And then they come back and she keeps staring at them.

She doesn't know what's going on.

And then she runs away one day because Maeve, her second oldest, has a fever, is not getting better.

Maeve's the youngest.

I'm sorry.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Yes, you're correct.

You're correct.

Because it's Mary, Abel and Noah.

Maeve.

Yep, you're correct.

And she says to Mary, I need to go to a hospital.

I know there are hospitals.

I know this is.

This is not like, I need something.

And so she says, go this way, because Mary wants Maeve to stay alive.

So she says, go this way.

There's a house over there.

Talk to the neighbors.

And she goes into the neighbor's house, and there's a TV and a truck.

And a truck and a refrigerator.

The Manosphere.

And he is taking the stickers off of vegetables and covering them in dirt and putting them in a different box.

The box that Caleb, her husband, usually brings into the house with all the produce he's grown.

Yes.

And she says, we need the hospital.

She's.

I have a child that's really sick.

She just says, help.

I think she just says help a couple of times.

And then she runs back because she doesn't want to be caught by Caleb, who has become this just very different person than he was in the year.

In current day.

It's never clear.

It's never clear.

And I actually would be curious what you guys think.

Yeah.

What time that is.

And she gets back and she thinks, okay, everything's gonna be fine now.

And then up pulls a Subaru and out gets her oldest daughter Clementine.

A full adult.

A full adult from the current day.

And she says, game's over.

The chick is over.

You're done.

I'm taking the kids.

You guys are crazy.

See you never.

Yeah.

Bye.

And that's it.

That's the end.

Am I forgetting anything?

That's a twist.

That's a twist.

And then the end.

End is that she goes to prison for 30 years for child abuse.

Thank you.

And is getting interviewed by her former.

College roommate, Rena, who has become a reporter who.

It's funny.

Natalie, like, hates her throughout the entire book, but then is so desperate for her approval and interview and conversation at the end.

This is.

Did you see this particular twist coming?

No.

Yeah.

I thought I read online about the book before I read it.

And I'm like, I'm gonna know what the twist is.

Yeah.

Like, I'm gonna feel it.

And I really didn't have a great clue of where they were going with it.

And so I was pleasantly surprised by that.

It's also set up to be like a sci fi or like a magical realism.

Like they trick you into thinking it's going to be that sort of like speculative fiction, but it's not.

It's just a woman with psychosis having nine children.

Yeah.

I mean, psychosis.

Let's unpack that, though.

I mean, what, what?

There's a lot there.

Post trauma depression, of course, all kinds.

All sorts of things baked into this.

So what I didn't mention is that we find out that this was a decision.

I don't know if this was.

I don't remember if this was a decision that she made or if it was something Caleb decided to do.

It was implied to be her decision because the moment right before the reveal is she is walking down the hallway to tell Doug, her father in law, that she knows how to fix the sticky situation they're in.

And the sticky situation is specifically that she assaulted their producer.

Yeah, Physically.

With sexual undertones because the producer had an affair with her husband.

And I've gotta say, I was texting people about how she was like weirdly.

Weirdly obsessed with other women being lesbians from page one.

And then, you know.

Yeah, she agrees with me.

There's also the.

The mother at.

Tells her that the church she goes to now is like, the.

The pastors, like, accepting of gay folks.

Right.

Like, so she, like, is she the mom trying to say, hey, it's okay, you know, like, oh, I didn't pick.

That up on that.

I definitely did.

I'm keyed into anything homosexual.

So you were on that.

That through line the whole way?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I will read homoeroticism.

The path was there.

You were like, she's a little fruity.

Well, yeah.

I mean, she's obsessed with Reena, and then she's kind of obsessed with Shannon too.

She's obsessed with Reena.

She's obsessed with Shannon.

She's obsessed with her high school, like, rival that she meets briefly in a Target, and she is immediately like, I bet she watches lesbian porn while her husband's asleep in bed with.

She's like, just like me, you're doing.

And I'm like, really?

Spirit specific detail girl.

Interesting.

And she's like, so many women do this.

And I'm like, do they?

Yeah.

You can still kind of see her description of Shannon when she first meets her.

Oh, the nose ring and the hair.

Yeah.

She's 19, too.

The assault scene itself, like, she's talking about her underwear.

Right?

Like, the specifics of it.

Shannon's pants coming down.

And she's.

She's specifically upset at one point that she feels that Shannon is trying to seduce everyone else on the farm but her.

Yes.

Interesting.

Oh, wow.

I told you, I'm locked in.

I read that, as I suspected Shannon of trying to, like, take down Natalie the entire time.

And I read that as her trying to isolate Natalie away from the rest of the people on the farm, of, like, trying to make her feel like she was conspiring against her the whole time.

No, I definitely read it as Natalie was jealous that Shannon was jealous Shannon.

Wasn't paying attention to her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

I think, too, like, Natalie is honing in specifically on Shannon's, like, panties in that scene.

She's like, they're lacy, and I don't remember where I was pink or something.

She did rosebud on him, and it was a little bit interesting just because it's like.

I think one aspect of that is, like, well, Natalie's gay, and she's into it.

And then another part of it, too, is, like, she kind of is jealous of the sexual agency that Shannon herself expresses and vies for it, which is also why I think she's so viciously upset about Rena and Rena's decisions that she made in college or didn't make in college, rather yeah.

And so it's, like, really interesting because I feel like so much of Natalie's anger is, like, her lashing out at the, like, expectations that she, like, enforces on herself.

It's like, but you did set up those expectations for yourself.

You could just, like, you could just be gay, and that's allowed.

Like, and it seems like your family would be okay with it.

And your mom said it was fine.

Not at first, not at worst, gotten there.

But I think it's also interesting to contrast the two sets of parents.

Right.

So Natalie's mom, like, accepts her older daughter getting a divorce.

She's like, you can come live with me.

That's totally fine.

Later, Clementine and the other four siblings, from the first quote unquote, first family, all go and live with Natalie's mother.

And then there's Doug and Amelia, who are Caleb's parents.

I'm obsessed with Amelia.

Oh, yeah.

So I had a really.

I had a really interesting thought about Amelia, about those two specifically.

So later on in the book, when I don't know what the context was, but Doug and Amelia are seeing Natalie and Caleb for the first time in a while.

And Natalie goes.

Doug has gotten veneers and he's gotten a facelift.

And Emelia looks like she's crumbling in on herself.

Like, she's like, become a shell of herself.

And I was like, okay, so this is a.

This is a comparison between the two.

Natalie's right.

So there's the Natalee who is running for approval, running for president.

Right.

She's gotten a facelift, she's gotten veneers.

She's.

There's the scene when she runs into a fan at the grocery store and she's like, okay, I have to try really hard to be the version of myself that I put online and not real me.

That's what I see Doug and Amelia being.

Because Amelia is crumbling.

She is no longer.

She's a shell of herself.

That is what Natalie could have been.

And Doug is like, the beautiful.

Like, he's so.

He's so healthy.

He's, like, sucked all the life out of Amelia.

But it's also very clear how much of a performance it is.

Oh, yeah.

Like the fact that she's pointing out that they are surgical procedures.

Yeah.

That you can tell.

That you can tell.

Yeah.

The entirety of, like, Doug and Amelia just felt very like, for me, I'm like, that's veep coated.

Sure is.

Yeah.

And I eat that up every time.

It was like, Emilio's.

What is she popping?

Like, Valium or something like that.

I don't know.

Like, look at this.

She's crazy.

What was Mommy's Little Helper?

That was like, an 80s thing.

It was very Kennedy vibes.

Oh.

Even before 70s, 60s, typically amphetamines.

Yeah.

So that's.

That's kind of what the mother character is taking was.

Was amphetamines.

So it was pretty common both for activity and for weight loss.

Yeah.

Which, shockingly enough, were often prescribed to people trying to do that stuff.

And then the problems occurred.

Yeah.

It's been around long enough that it's like the Rolling Stones for single.

Right?

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

But then, of course, Emelia gets some for Natalie.

Yes.

Because Natalie seems to not be doing that well.

She doesn't like being a mother.

Caleb is being Caleb.

So why not fix it with some drugs?

She hates being a mother so much, which, like, I didn't love the twist.

I'm gonna be upfront about that.

I did not love the twist.

Did you want something else?

I wanted something else.

I wanted it to be speculative fiction so bad.

Yeah.

But it wouldn't be popular fiction if it was.

Sorry.

If it was speculative fiction.

I don't know sometimes.

But what I thought was really, really fun and what I really enjoyed was this woman who has made her entire career out of being a mother and being a wife who hates her children and her family and her husband so much.

I thought that was so juicy.

And I just, like.

I don't know.

I wanted it.

I was like, you could have dropped the.

The twist.

You could have dropped the.

The time travel elements.

You didn't even need, like, just, like, give me the.

If you don't want to do speculative fiction, just give me the straightforward narrative of this woman blowing up her own life.

Yeah.

I feel like, like, the speculative fiction twist, quote, unquote, that, like, it felt like a cop out of being speculative fiction.

It's either you do speculative fiction and you do it, or you do women's fiction.

And, like, that's what this is.

Which.

It would have been great if it was just, like, picking one or the other, but I felt like it really floundered because it didn't really make a decision.

I didn't need the back and forth, honestly, like, I looked forward to the present day.

I wanted the cousin.

I'm so much more interested.

Yeah.

Every time we got back to him, like, yeah, yeah, give me more.

And then you go back into.

And she said, my daughter Mary yelled at me again today.

Okay.

And we had to do laundry, and it was terrible.

And it's like, yep, washing was awful back then.

We had to make hats for chickens.

That.

I mean, that was kind of bonkers.

That was fun.

I like that.

I actually.

That was the one thing I like.

Oh, chicken four times in a row.

And you're like, okay.

There's only so many times she can make bread like that and be like, it tasted bad.

And you're like, we got it the first time, babe.

You can't cook.

Doesn't Clementine try it later on?

She's like, this sucks.

She's like, yeah, awful.

Mom, you're bad.

It was.

It was pretty cool.

This is your only thing, and you can't even do.

Yes, I will say.

You know what?

So I had.

I had made a note that it was interesting that Clem, not Clementine, that Natalie seemed to just not know at all what was going on.

How has she not, in the five years that have elapsed, figured out how to bake bread?

Truly.

And.

Oh, it's more than five years.

No, it was five years.

I checked again this afternoon.

It's five years.

They hadn't seen.

Died.

No, because Mary is 12 or 13, and Mary is the baby she was pregnant with when they.

Longer.

It's actually that's.

It's worse, guys, I'm fairly certain, if I'm not wrong, Mary's actually.

She looks 12 or 18, but she's, like, deeply unhealthy.

She's literally 18.

Yes, you're right.

Because also, Natalie says that she's.

Or, no, Clementine says she's 50 when they find her.

That's what it was.

It had been five years.

Because then she's 55 when she's sentenced.

Yeah, but.

And she was like.

She was like, 32, 33.

So it's literally almost 20.

20 Years or something.

Yeah, so.

Something like that.

Okay, so I was wrong there.

Yeah, but.

So I don't remember what I was saying.

No.

The most heartbreaking thing, honestly, for me, was the reveal about Maeve.

She has this daughter, Maeve.

In this whole entire book, you're led to believe that Maeve is three or four years old and that she's, like, very, very little.

But no, she's, like.

Come to find out something.

No, she's like 12 or 13, and she's maybe 10.

Developmentally delayed.

10 Yes.

She's 10 and she's specifically developmentally delayed because they.

Because of Natalie gave birth there and the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck.

Yeah.

And she wasn't breathing for hot.

It was.

Natalie and Caleb were too busy yelling at each other Right.

Until Mary came in and gave her.

Cpr, which is just so wild.

That was very sad to me.

So Mary is 18.

Yes.

Because 8 year old Mary thought to breathe into her little sister's mouth.

Yeah.

So there's like, definitely some plot holes in this.

I was gonna say before we go to break.

Yeah.

I have, I have one question because I'm reading.

Go ahead.

And I'm listening and I hear the difference between 35 and 50.

Yeah.

There's no discussion of the intermediary whatsoever.

Is like, how does she not know how to bake bread?

How were her hands.

She was like, my hands have gotten rough from using the lie.

But like, you've been washing clothes like this for 15 years.

How were your hands not.

So we're to assume she.

She's got like a memory lapse, though, I think.

Yeah.

Maybe she's got like.

Well, and the way that Mary was talking, it was like, oh, this is not the first time this has happened where she's just like forgotten everything.

Yeah.

You're missing.

You're missing a chunk of the story.

You are unmoored.

Purposefully.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's.

I guess in hindsight you're like, okay, well, maybe I should have seen that coming.

But well done to the author.

All right, let's take a break there and we'll come back.

We'll talk about Caleb in the manosphere and his.

He should have been a kindergarten teacher probably.

And let's talk about the real social media versions of this.

Let's do that.

Yeah.

The hit band of the millennials, Caleb and the Manosphere.

And welcome back to reader's advisory.

So, guys, let's talk about.

Let's talk about influencers in social media.

Let's do it.

Okay, so who do we.

Who are we.

Who are we saying this is a.

Send up of Ballerina Farm?

The one that I've seen the most chatter about is Ballerina Farm.

For sure.

It's a call.

It didn't Ballerina Farm have like, she sells raw milk and it got like.

Or something like that.

It got shut down.

The town that her store is in, everybody in that Town hates it.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Where.

Where do you.

We know where it is?

I think it's like a.

It's like a.

One of those, like, fake Dutch towns.

Oh, really?

In Utah?

Like 30 minutes from her actual house.

Yeah, it's 30 minutes from her actual house.

Would you.

I would not do that if I was super famous like she is.

No, no.

That's crazy.

But so if you don't know.

For the uninitiated, Ballerina Farms is Hannah Nealman, formerly Juilliard.

Right, Juilliard.

Ballerina, educated ballerina.

She has nine children.

So, okay, so it's 36ish.

And she's got that same.

It's the same exact formula as Natalie.

She's got a rich husband, a farm, a bunch of kids, and it's very famous on social media.

It's.

Yeah, it's very sad with her.

I think it's like the whole thing was like she was renovating their, like, dream house for, like, ages on Instagram, giving everyone updates on what they were doing to build their.

Which is very, like, just like yesteryear.

Right.

And then her husband made her sell it.

Made her sell.

I did not know that.

I got a different one.

Why is he.

Do you know why he's rich?

Yes.

His dad owns eight airlines, and he specifically, she.

I just refresh.

Airlines are there.

Nobody needs Adam's JetBlue.

Yes, Daddy's JetBlue.

So I just refreshed Mr. Blue Chips.

I have never engaged with any Ballerina Farm content on purpose.

It is possible that I've seen her shorts by accident, but I try to scroll really fast so that the algorithm doesn't give me more tradwife content.

But.

So I just refreshed on this article.

Her husband specifically, she did not go out with him for six months as he was pursuing her, and then he found out that she was flying on JetBlue to go to New York City.

So he went to his dad, and he got the seat next to her on that flight, and they were married within three months.

And then she was pregnant within another three months.

Stalker.

Yes.

Disgusting.

And her response to the article that came out about this was like, oh, no, I don't hate my husband.

Why would you say I hate my husband?

It's like, girl, you said you hate your husband.

Yeah.

You didn't say it in those words, but you said, the only time I got to have an epidural was when he wasn't at a birth.

And it was really nice to have an epidural.

Yeah.

Like, so he is very religious as well.

They're both Mormon.

He's a cool guy, is what you're saying.

Oh, yeah.

So cool guy.

He's really comfortable with letting women make their own choices about birth in their bodies.

And the one thing that she wanted in their home was like, a ballet studio so she could continue dancing.

And.

And he was like, no, the kids are gonna get homeschooled there.

Yeah.

Like, this man I have never met, but I would beat him with a rock.

Like,.

Oh, can I.

Can I.

Can I read the Instagram description for a second, please?

Ballerina Farm.

Married to At Hog Fathering.

Mothering.

Eight littles.

Ew.

Juilliard School graduate.

City folk turned ranchers at Ballerina Farm store.

This is destination.

That's definitely 100% what the author was.

Absolutely.

The fact that the first thing in her bio is married to at Hog Father.

That's his handle.

Hog fathering.

So stupid.

He has so many fewer followers than her.

It's kind of funny, of course, because.

She is more compelling than he is.

Yeah.

She is more interesting.

So I think most women are.

It's true.

You know, you said it.

Guys, guys.

I do have a minor in women's studies.

I don't.

I just like to read old feminist books.

I just think women are cool.

They're like, really cool.

I just think we're neat.

So there's another.

There's another thing that I wanted to point out, which.

There was a book that came out, I think it was last year, the House of My Mother by Sheri Franke, which is about another trad wife influencer who got.

She went to prison for child abuse because her children were being held in a absolutely horrible conditions.

And she was like, posting online under the name eight passengers.

And people loved her because she was such a great mom.

Wonderful mother.

Yeah.

Well, that's not the people that drove off the cliff, is it?

Who's that?

The.

I'm sorry, Somebody drove off a cliff?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

There was another couple, really, that drove off a cliff.

Yeah.

Influencers.

And killed other kids.

Yeah.

With all the kids, they, like, adopted eight kids or whatever.

I just love how the whole industry of.

Of family influencing has no dark side whatsoever.

Certainly hasn't ruined a generation of children.

Social media hasn't really poisoned our brains.

The best line in the book.

I don't know.

Do you have it in your notes where it's Clementine reacting to the mother filming her?

Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah.

Where she.

I don't.

Do you know where it is.

It's in the.

But she basically says.

It's like.

She's like, stop filming me.

I don't want to be filmed.

No, there's a part where she's like.

Like, you're grounded.

She's like, does that mean I'm gonna be in less videos or more videos?

It's like, oh, yeah, that's cold.

But it is homeschooled away from society.

What does grounded mean?

Yeah, never get to leave anyway.

You don't have any friends.

I was like, grounded from what?

Seeing friends that she doesn't have.

Right.

Like, this girl couldn't know what the.

Ocean going to target.

She's grounded from.

Do you know?

That's all they get to do.

What's really interesting, you pointed this out earlier when we were talking about this, Rachel, that there's, like, no church, which involved.

Which.

That's honestly a thing that I really had, like, a weird.

I was like, this is like.

I feel like so much of, like, what you deal with when you're talking about, like, tradwives, you know?

Right.

Is like, you know that that concept of, like, they're looking for community, and that's really like, a huge piece of why people end up falling into those things is that they're desperately lonely or isolated in some way.

And it's, like, very bizarre to me because I feel like so much of, like, being a trad wife is, like, inherently deeply performative.

And a lot of it is not just performing online, but specifically performing for women within your community, AKA at church.

And yet we don't really.

It's like, not a huge piece of the story at all.

No, it's, like, very odd to me because, like, it's clear, like, in her state of psychosis, that, like, religion and her concept of what a God is is, like, something that's very important to the character.

And yet church not being an element of that.

Her not taking, like, the word of a pastor so seriously isn't a part of that.

And I feel like.

And any real trad wife would really be into that as well.

I also felt like it was a little bit weak just because it's like so much of, like, Christianity puts so much on women in terms of, like, what it expects out of mothers, you know, And I feel like, you know, a woman not liking her kids would be dealing with so much, even internalized, just, like, shame about that.

Shame and guilt concerning that whole thing and, like, not meeting expectations of quote unquote, godly womanhood.

But it's like she doesn't deal with that at all.

No, there's.

There's not an ounce of guilt in that woman's brain.

No.

She thinks literally everybody else is doing wrong and she is doing right, and.

She thinks everyone's jealous of her.

Yes.

I think that she's incapable of admitting that she does not like her children, which I think is some of that external force.

Yeah.

But she has no internal feelings of.

Shame or guilt, which is really interesting, because I feel like one of the most compelling lines I read in the book was when she hires the nannies, and she's like.

She has this one sentence where she goes, thank God I'll never have to be alone in a room with my children again.

Yes.

That one stood out.

And you were just like, whoa, this is a person who really, really hates her kids.

Yeah, well, and there's the whole scene.

I think it's the most unsettling scene in the book, and there's a lot of unsettling scenes.

But it's, as you referenced before, I think Robin, when she's at the grocery store, and she runs into a fan, an early fan.

Right.

And she realizes that she left her newborn June bug.

No, it was Jessa.

Oh, it's Jessa.

Oh, I did go back and check.

I'm sorry.

No, in the car while she was in.

And.

Yeah.

And it looks.

It sounds like it was on purpose.

It wasn't like she was like, oh, no, I forgot my baby in the car.

It was like, I needed a break.

And so much of her horror in that situation where the fan, like, realized.

Because the fan points it out, she's like, you left your kid in the car?

And her horror at that situation isn't at, oh, my God, Is my kid okay?

I left them in the comments.

Car.

I forgot.

You know, it's that, what will my fans think of me?

I got caught.

It's about being caught.

Being negligent of your children.

It's not about being negligent of your children.

Yeah.

Because it's not actually about the kids.

She doesn't care about that at all.

One of the other moments that was like, a very deep horror to me was when she's giving birth to Clementine, her first child, and they keep calling her mama, and she's like, that's not me.

She's like, neo gross.

She's like, this is disgusting.

Like, put it back.

She's like, I don't like.

I liked being pregnant.

Everyone's really nice to you when you're pregnant.

That's the thing is she Liked being pregnant because of what it said about her.

Yeah.

It said she.

She was married because she's young.

She's married.

And that she has conservative values.

She's been picked.

She's better than all the other girls.

And then so she gives birth and she tells her mother and the nurse she doesn't think this child is hers.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Who specifically is referenced as looking the most like her of any of the children?

And she's like, that's not mine.

And, like, so much of the book, too, she's, like, referencing her infant daughter, Clementine, and she's just like.

And her soul is dead.

Eyes stared back at me and her.

Clementine's eyes.

You don't see any.

Like, it's just, like, so insane to me how she, like, personifies her infant daughter just, like, totally.

Like, this kid has no emotions or feelings, and it's like, Queen, I think you're projecting.

Yeah.

I think maybe you're the one making your child like that.

One of the things I really like about this book is how much of an unreliable narrative narrator she is.

Which, like, again, I didn't love the twist, but I do love how every single thing we see is filtered through this, like, deeply unwell woman.

Yes.

She hates everyone around her, and she is trying to gas herself up constantly.

And she's hiding so many things from herself, and she's hiding so many things from the reader.

And I think that's so fun.

I think more women should be evil in fiction, maybe in real life, but I'm not going to commit to that.

Don't you think she is just.

Just evil or evil.

I hate using that word, but I don't.

I don't think she's unreliable necessarily.

I think she's unreliable.

Yes.

Because of.

You're promoted by women.

Yeah.

All right.

I think she's specifically unreliable because she.

I don't think she has theory of mind for other people.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, to her, people do not exist outside of herself.

Like, they are consumed with thinking about her at all moments.

Whenever she is thinking about another person, it is specifically she is thinking, what do they think of me?

Does that define the term you mentioned, theory of mind?

Theory of mind is like, the ability to think of people as existing outside of yourself.

So not.

I'm misusing it.

And my girlfriend, the psychiatrist would get at me for that.

But I think that as like, a little pop culture reference, it works because it's about the, like, toddlers don't have theory of mind yet.

They don't, you know, but like consider people existing outside of themselves.

Like, mom is something that is there to give them snacks and give them comfort and that is how she thinks of other people.

She has not developed to that, like, oh, my mom can go to a new church and have a new pastor.

Which makes me think a lot about the twist with her mother, which is the whole concept is like the entire book.

Her mother has kind of implied like her, her mother has spread the rumor to the locals in the community that their dad is like dead.

And to her daughter she's like, your dad left us, but we're just gonna tell everyone that he's dead.

But it's revealed later on that it's like dad left not because he cheated, but because she cheated because she was bored.

And that like totally shakes up Natalie's perspective of her mother that he was.

Willing to make it work.

And.

Yeah.

And she said she was like, nah.

Yeah.

It's also.

And then she liked being single so much that she implied to her children that they were still married so she wouldn't have to get remarried.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is just a great piece of evidence for how insidious the hatred towards single women is and independent women is, God forbid.

Did you love the.

I loved the conversations between Natalie and her mother and the sister more.

I always thought you learned the most there, especially the sister of mother.

The whole what does it end with?

Basically you're not.

Why can't you just be kind?

Is like the big, the big thing there.

Can I take this moment to read my description of Natalie's sister that I am obsessed with?

So this is just an example of some great phrasing that the author uses.

So here's a little excerpt.

Don't do cocaine.

My sister Abigail said fearfully.

This is when Natalie's heading to Harvard.

She was two years older than me, with a heart shaped face, wide Bambi eyes and a crumb of a diamond ring on her finger.

She was engaged to her high school sweetheart, heart, a pimple faced corn dog of a young man with a bad temper.

Isn't that great?

I love when everyone's described as a corn dog.

It's just like rum.

Genuinely good phrasing.

I'm like, dang, I.

There's.

There's so many strengths to the writing.

Like, it's a very fun read.

It's a fun read.

It's.

We said this earlier.

It's fast, it's really tightly edited.

The flipping back and forth between the time.

I feel like that weakens it.

I agree.

I agree.

It weakened It.

I think you could have done a lot more exposition.

It's a hell of a hook, though.

It is.

You're trying to sell a book, right?

It is for a book, but it's also like, you're lying.

Pick a lame girl.

Yeah.

Do you know she.

Carol Claire Burke was writing short stories about Evermore?

What's the other first one?

The Taylor Swift.

Really?

Yeah.

Folklore.

Yeah.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, that's.

She was.

Went to whatever the writing.

The.

She got her masters from where?

Well, I'm gonna need to be reading those.

Yeah.

And that was.

That was her.

Like, she was doing that as like I was.

Writership workshop.

No, it's in the back.

But.

But that's.

She had.

I think she had written a couple Bennington.

She'd written a couple of novels which didn't get sold.

And then she was like doing that for fun and people loved it.

And.

Yeah, she's.

She's good.

She's got a.

She's got a. I mean, she's got a good voice.

And I think that's honed because she has a podcast about pop culture.

So, like, she knows that this will get people looking at it because people are obsessed.

Like, just like Natalie says, the angry women are the ones that are paying attention to the influencers.

That's like, genuinely true.

Like, I'm sure Hannah Neelman has some of the.

Has some great, like, genuine viewers, but I think there are a lot of hate watchers too.

I mean, also, like, that description that you read.

Yeah.

Is like so online coded.

Yes, it is.

Like, it's so sharp and vicious and quick.

But it's.

It's punchy, right?

It's so punchy.

Yeah.

Punchy.

Mean.

Yeah, Just in.

So that direct tweet level.

Yes, it is.

Yeah.

Yes.

Natalie would have eaten 160 characters, tops.

But something that would ruin somebody's Life completely in 140 characters.

Yep.

It's very.

Go girl.

Give us nothing.

Add to a lipa.

Yeah.

If someone called me a corn dog, I'd be like, well, I'm gonna call it a day.

Corn dog would be called a life.

That's it.

You know, crumb of a diamond.

Diamond ring.

I think this is so awesome.

I think this leads us very clearly into like, what era do we think that the modern day is?

Because they are just getting smartphones when they buy the farm.

Do you mean.

Do you what?

Or cell phones.

Part of the.

So you're talking about when they buy the Farm.

You think that's.

I think it's much more recent.

I think it would have to be.

I.

But she doesn't get a cell phone until.

I think that's more to do with her than it does to do with the time, though.

For me.

It's the manosphere.

That's.

Yeah.

That's a more very.

Yeah.

Development.

And we should know there is a lot of time that goes on in this book.

This is a 30 year long story.

Yeah.

It starts when she's like 18.

It goes until she's 55.

It's a long story.

Yeah.

I think by the time she's like, what is it, like 32 or something?

Like, like, I think it's got to be like modern day now.

It could be right now 20, 25.

That would work for me.

Yeah.

Went to Harvard.

That's upsetting.

Yeah.

I was like, how the hell did you get there?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

But like, Harvard functions the whole concept of like, elitism.

And it's like you got to know people.

Yeah.

And you got to be so freaking smart to get there.

And the fact that for me, it's like, like she's at one of the most elite institutions in the whole world.

She got a place.

Yeah.

And she waits and then she drops out and she doesn't care.

She dropped out with like a semester to go.

It didn't have to be Harvard.

I don't think.

It didn't have to be hard.

It could have been anything.

But I like the fact that you pick Harvard, which is like, it kind.

Of had to be something like that because if we're.

If this is a direct send up of Hannah Nealman.

She went to Juilliard.

Yeah.

It should have been.

It should have been like, like an IV or Ivy adjacent.

It also had to be a rejection of that level of influence and importance.

I just find it like, like Harvard being like, like the most extreme example of that.

I was kind of like, that was kind of a lot like, also, how the hell did Caleb get in?

Like, I know he got in because of connections.

Like, I know.

I know he got in because of connections.

But it was also like, how the hell did Caleb get there?

Yeah.

It feels like it should have been Brown or nyu.

I was like, bro, the fact that.

I know.

But I really thought it was jealousy because I was like, the fact that they're at Harvard and I wasn't.

I literally have a note that says, how absolutely idiotic is Caleb.

Oh my God, that man.

He's so fucking stupid.

Such a dumb, dumb man.

I can't stand his whole bit about the rats in the city.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

What is that?

The rats are polluting the air.

No.

Yeah, the rats are polluting the air.

Everyone is sick all the time.

Yeah.