Caro Claire Burke’s ‘Yesteryear’ Goes Hollywood: Anne Hathaway Attached as Amazon MGM Fast-Tracks Viral Tradwife Thriller

In the past month, debut novelist Caro Claire Burke has vaulted from promising MFA graduate to breakout literary voice, as her first novel “Yesteryear” storms bestseller lists and lights up BookTok, Instagram and Reddit threads. Burke’s premise is instantly clickable: an ultra–online “trad-wife” influencer is mysteriously confronted by the real 19th-century pioneer woman she pretends to emulate, forcing a darkly funny reckoning with curated femininity and America’s nostalgia industry. Early reviewers have compared the book’s satire to Ottessa Moshfegh and its time-slip structure to “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” generating cross-genre buzz that retailers love. The hype is translating into numbers: • Independent booksellers report that “Yesteryear” has outsold every other debut fiction title for three consecutive weeks, with some stores re-ordering six times. • On TikTok, the hashtag #CaroClaireBurke has surpassed 12 million views, driven by reaction videos of readers debating whether Burke is celebrating or skewering the trad-wife trend. • Burke’s own Instagram following has jumped from 8 000 to nearly 70 000 since publication day, and her reel about “writing the book for women who performed perfection online” hit 1.2 million plays in 72 hours. Publishers Weekly insiders say the novel’s first print run of 40 000 has already gone back to press twice, an exceptional result for a literary debut. Streaming producers have noticed: two L.A. mini-rooms are reportedly developing pitches for a limited series adaptation, attracted by the project’s built-in social-media discourse. Why the surge now? Timing. The trad-wife aesthetic—prairie dresses, sourdough starters, anti-feminist sound bites—has been trending on TikTok for months. Burke delivers a novel that both indulges and interrogates the fantasy, giving readers a safe arena to critique influencer culture without leaving the algorithmic feed. Expect the conversation to intensify in June, when Burke embarks on a 12-city U.S. tour and appears on the “Diabolical Lies” podcast, which she co-hosts, for a live episode dissecting parasocial relationships in publishing. For readers, critics and content creators alike, Caro Claire Burke’s “Yesteryear” is no longer just a debut novel; it’s the summer’s must-discuss culture object—one that turns the mirror on anyone who has ever filtered their life, liked the aesthetic, or longed for an easier past that never really existed.