... started by asking Carol Claire Burke if she was a fan of real tradwife influencers.

influencers.You know, I think that I was kind of obsessed with the videos, and I didn't get why.

'Cause, like, I'm, you know, I, I have a degree, I'm a working woman, I'm secular, and I was, like, obsessed with buying a honeybee oven.

How did you find out what their lives are like?

Well, a lot of this book is about misinformation.

And so part of the, part, without giving any spoilers away, I didn't really take much time to try to embody any one trad wife influencer.

It was more just getting into the mind of a woman who doesn't wanna be in the world anymore, and that was kind of where I had a jumping-off point from.

Do you think there's a danger in us labelling women that and I guess who gets to do that?

I mean, I don't think anyone has the right to do anything.

I feel like the Internet has kind of spawned just this whole world where anyone can say anything.

I mean, there are for me, I'm I'm a reality show junkie and there are probably 10 different reality show crises taking place.

We make assumptions about people all the time online.

So that's not just Nara Smith and Hannah Nealman.

We make assumptions about people's character.

And I just wanted, I guess, to hear what's that been like setting off and building something from scratch? Not engaging in the sponsorship collaboration space, I guess.

These, this is the first page, page and a half of Yesteryear.

"This is the last day of the life I imagined for myself.

I woke up two minutes before my alarm went off, like usual.

5:58 and bing, eyes wide open, ready to greet the day.

I've never had a hard time waking up in the morning, never used the snooze button either, not once in my life.

Sobriety helps.

I don't drink.

What is it about seeking education that makes her think this might be her ticket out?

Why, uh, do you think, why are they actually on the same coin?

I think that they are mirror worlds.

I think the, the, the rabbit hole of becoming a trad wife is basically like the, the online doppelganger of the manosphere.

It's these, these internet conspiracy theory forums that are all about returning to your gender role, you know? And, like, so for women, it has to look soft because women are meant to be soft, and for men, it has to look hard because men are meant to be hard.

And so I think maybe the aesthetics can look, uh, contradictory because, you know, one is this guy, you know, looks maxing or whatever the hell, and then one is, like, a woman, you know, taking delicate care of herself, but they are meant to be, like, a perfect symbiosis.

And they, they follow the same routine.

It's a bunch of grifters.

So if wo- if women take one thing from you today, one thing you need for them to actually hear, what would it be?

How, how weird was that?

that?Oh, it's, uh, it's psychotic.

I still don't fully believe it.

Um, and I think that's probably a good thing.

I think it's probably been a blessing for me that I don't really...

I've been very dissociative, so that's a, a problem for my future therapist.

How did you find out what their lives are like?

Well, a lot of this book is about misinformation, and so part of the, part... without giving any spoilers away, I didn't really take much time to try to embody any one tradwife influencer.

Mm.

And so someone is saying, "You know, my postpartum experience was really rough, and it was really cathartic to read that." Or like, "You know, I have gone down these rabbit holes of what type of birth I wanna have, medicated or home birth or what have you." Or, "You know, uh, my mom didn't have access to her finances.

My, my dad totally controlled the finances, and when they got divorced, it was a nightmare." And so it's so interesting how I feel like Natalie is almost a Rorschach test, and women are immediately thinking...

And again, not everyone.

Some people might hate her.

But the women I've spoken with really seem to connect not with her personality, but with the adversity that she moves through, and that's what they're more fixated on.

Yeah.

Every other day.

... to find out what 1855 was like?

I did a lot of research, and without getting too much into anything that would spoil, you know, too many twists, I had to do research and then I had to decide how to incorporate that research, and I had to decide what I wanted to include, what I wanted to subvert, what I wanted to manipulate.

There are a lot of details in the book that are untrue, and there are details in the book that are true, and that was intentional.

And so I did research, of course, about homesteading in the 1800s, just what it might have been like for these women.

I did research into fundamentalist communities and, and what it's like for women in these communities.

And I also did research into the world of influencing.

So you know, these influencer pyramid schemes, and boot camps, and all these worlds where people become obsessed with the performance online of social media.

... and fought so hard for us to have more accessibility.

What is the Rina-Natalie duality in your mind represent?

Well, I think it's important to note that we don't ever really know Rina.

We only know the way Natalie views her, and so Natalie is very uncharitable.

She has a very specific projection that she puts onto this roommate, and I think that Natalie sees the world and she sees a lot of the elements of it that would make someone want to disavow it.

I think that she sees the elements of modern feminism that a lot of people talk about right now, which is, "You're gonna have a bad job, and you're gonna dislike it, and then you're gonna be too late for kids, and wouldn't it be easier? Wouldn't things be easier if you just got married?" And she enters college with the basics of that moral framework, and so I think that when she already has that foundational understanding and then she sees this young woman who is having a hard time in college, who is getting treated poorly by men, I think it is kind of her knee-jerk response to go, "Yep, and that's why I'm out.

That's why I'm, I'm peacing out of this."

Anyway, talk about your decision to make pretty much all the men in this novel, like, dolts or despicable.

Ooh, I don't think her father-in-law is a dolt.

It's at the Underbelly Boulevard in Soho, London.

And we're on late at 9:15 PM, so if you have a terrible date booked in, you can go to that and then join us after for a debrief.

We had so much fun at the last Valentine's Day show.

Yes, and we both absolutely overshared.

Will we do it again? You'll have to come along-

And then one morning, she wakes up under a comforter that is not her comforter, and she thinks to herself, "This frigid, knotted, lumpy floor is not your Brazilian imported hardwood." Tell us about what is happening in the year of our Lord [laughs] 1855.

That was one of my favorite scenes to write.

So that's the moment where the reader is basically immersed into the 1800s for the first time, and Natalie wakes up, and she's in her house, but it is not her house.

And as she kind of ventures farther and farther, she comes across children who look like her children but are not her children.

And she steps outside, and she recognizes her property, but, you know, there's no lighting.

And the, the chicken coop is falling apart, and the, the barn looks old.

And she finds herself in this very uncanny reality of a time period that she has been fetishizing for so long, and it's really terrifying, and it was really, really exciting for me to write as a kind of scene setter for this novel.

What's going on in her head as she's starting to find these inconsistencies?

I'm curious what you wanted to say about the idea of performance with this story and, and where this idea actually of Natalie's mom imagining that audience came from, 'cause I thought that was so fascinating and almost like a sad but good coping mechanism.

Yeah, you know, I think the, the performance...

The idea of performance is a theme that layers through this novel in so many different ways that I found so satisfying to explore.

And of course, the first way that you see it is through the idea of an influencer.

You're performing online.

I think that's something that we are all very comfortable with at this point.

I think children under- understand that at that point.

Like, is that something that you were ever taught about growing up, and did that make its way into the novel at all?

These, this is the first page, page and a half of Yesteryear.

This is the last day of the life I imagined for myself.

I woke up two minutes before my alarm went off, like usual.

5:58 and bing, eyes wide open, ready to greet the day.

I've never had a hard time waking up in the morning.

Never used the snooze button either, not once in my life.

Sobriety helps.

What is it about seeking education that makes her think this might be her ticket out?