“In 2026, there is no coherent symbol of feminist resistance. There was no Women’s March on the day of T’s second inauguration. At protests against the administration, the handmaid costume is still present, but her power is significantly diminished. The only accessory protesters wear these days that conveys any tone of seriousness are heavy-duty chemical face masks, designed to counter the onslaught of teargas disseminated from hooded men who stalk the perimeters of elementary schools, hospitals and churches on the days when they aren’t busy calling women bitches and shooting them dead.”
– Caro Claire Burke in The Guardian
“You’re reading what?!” echo my literary fiction friends, lighting up my DM’s like fireflies in the summer grass. What can I say. I caved. I dipped my feet in the Zeitgeist.
How much more delicious/genius/alluring could the premise be? A tradwife selling the fantasy of life in Yesteryear (a place and an idea) to her millions of followers, finds herself waking up one day in 1855 and having to contend with how life in said yesteryear actually felt like. Genius indeed.
What follows is a thriller/satire/absurdist tale of the highest order, written with fury and acerbic bite, propulsive and unputdownable. Bookish crack cocaine. Halloween candy on overdrive.
I came to this book partly because of how much I revere Caro Claire Burke’s incisive and ruthless takes on culture and politics in her podcast Diabolical Lies, where she deconstructs the times we are living in with clear eyes and absolute terror.
While you won’t find too much in-depth character development here or even radically insightful commentary, this novel does feel like a very timely Trojan Horse and a (not so) delicate middle finger to the patriarchy. I’ll take that.
Under the gloss of the mirrorball that is the “performance” of womanhood today, you will unearth a lot of psychosis, regression, repression and ultimately sadness.
Cue all of the children who are left in the dust.
