Well, well, well, if it isn’t the most talked about book right now! I don’t often read hyped books as they come out, but I’m glad I reached for this one. It will make for some interesting coffee and bar table conversations this summer!
I think books that are ‘of the moment’ are always challenging thematically, but they’re also fun to read. You’re propelled on by disgust, curiosity, recognition, and familiarity.
You’re inside the head of an incredibly indoctrinated ‘Christian tradwife’, Natalie Heller Mills, who is viciously attached to her ideology, at the same time as being an incredibly unhappy soul. She’s constantly trying to stay above water as an influencer, monetising her children and her so-called free-range farm life, locked in a deathly battle with her (stupid) husband, who is so brilliantly drawn as a caricature of a slightly unwilling, yet manosphere-pilled, man-child.
I appreciate the fact that you see the rot behind the scenes and her fate really explores the impossibility of the sort of lifestyle she’s promoting online.
The twist is that she suddenly wakes up in the past and has to do the tradwife thing for real! It turns out it’s more than just baking sourdough…
Obviously, in a book like this, there’s big questions around plausibility. This aspect of this book is probably the thing that has caused the most ruckus, but I think as much as you can manage a pivot like this, the book does well with its own premise.
I have a fair amount of grace when it comes to modern fables, and I really appreciate the context of the underbelly of the Christian far-right and its unhealthy obsessions and ugliness. I think you get some great analysis of the growing political tide and how all the different strands coalesce and come together. As a book with a clever premise, it’s very addictive.
I really liked all the supporting characters: the emptiness of relationships coupled with an attempt to grapple with the realness of motherhood was really interesting and part of the contradictory nature of the whole exercise.
Are you gonna read this book yourself?
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