Fallow: A Novel
Slyly funny and disarmingly tender, Fallow is the story of a young woman who signs up to be the world’s first in-house corporate surrogate, then finds herself caught up in a social experiment of another kind.
Natalie knows one truth: there is no such thing as a good job.
As the clock ticks away at the call center where she logs complaints of workplace harassment, she tries to ignore the increasing pain in her jaw. She has no dental insurance. She has no skills or ambitions. She has student loans. And, minute by minute, she hears the many ways workers are not just not getting by, but actually getting hustled.
Then, at the blood bank where she sells her plasma, a mysterious flyer leads her to The Company. Natalie turns out to be the perfect candidate for their pilot program, pitched as an opportunity to help women access greater gender equity. She will be their in-house surrogate, delivering seven babies in ten years and enabling their executives to have motherhood without maternity leave. Finally, she will be adequately—generously—compensated.
For years, her every need is met: stacks of healthy meals in the refrigerator of a luxury condo, fitness coaches and nutritionists, around-the-clock health care. Between deliveries, she takes time off— a fallow period, with no obligations or expectations. For the first time in her life, she is good at her job; for the first time, she feels free.
But just as she’s about to fulfill the terms of her contract, a staffing decision upends everything. Natalie is pulled into an entirely different kind of social experiment, one that raises new questions about her future, her freedom, her purpose, what she can expect from the world, and what she can offer to it.
Woundingly funny and genuinely moving, Sarah Anderson’s Fallow is a tender, alarmingly real vision of a woman balancing on the knife-edge of capitalism as she comes to realize who she wants to be.
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Community Reviews
Seeking: single, unattached female. Avoidant attachment style and a very low score on the Vormelker Scale of Maternal Urges. Excellent birthing genetics and an ideal hip to waist ratio. Agreeable disposition. No tattoos. No cats.
Position description: living a stress-free life facilitated for you, ensuring a relaxing, luxurious year, an unparalleled 3:1 retirement fund contribution, and earning an astronomical bonus for carrying a child to term. The position we’re offering covers living expenses, moving costs, housing, food, medical care, health, vision, dental, life insurance, and a stipend for maternity clothes–aka everything you’ve ever needed–with the full salary simply for what you’ve ever wanted.
The position title: Gestational Carrier for yet-to-be-determined clients of The Company LLC for seven viable (>25 weeks) pregnancies during a period of no more than ten years--a fair enough trade–one decade of your body to win back the rest of your life.
Employees who are pregnant just aren’t quite as efficient. They require more sleep, more bathroom breaks, less ability to travel. They can’t be assigned long-term projects because you don’t know exactly when they’re going to leave.
Project Genesis has created a perfect solution: a cutting-edge pilot surrogacy program designed to facilitate better work-life balance for our female employees. A gestational carrier allows female employees to follow their passion and maintain their career and their health while also fulfilling their dream of starting a family. At the Company that is the dream for all women. You really can have it all!
Natalie jumps at the chance and signs the contract to be the project’s pioneer gestational carrier. She is living the dream until she develops feelings not for the fetuses she carries but for the friendship she cultivates with mothers and her co-dependency on the Company. “After so many years of being fed and kept, I had no idea how much it cost to maintain myself.” She learns to celebrate both fallowness and the fruits of the body’s labors as a place to contain oneself.
This was a really unique, clever plot that could totally happen in today's day and age. 'The Company' is a household name that in the spirit of DEI, has an all women board of directors. Hooray! However, they've noticed that when women get pregnant, take maternity leave, then come back to work (or not), their productivity declines substantially.
Enter Natalie, the company's first pre-approved corporate surrogate. She'll help these executives maintain their crazy work ethics by carrying their babies for them. She's also a boon to those that have fertility issues or can't find the time and space to get pregnant on their own.
You may think, who would want to do such a job? Natalie is a 20-30 something woman who has never been motivated by work. Currently working at a call center, she soon realizes she needs dental work, but has no benefits. Being of sound mind and baby-making hips she applies for a strange sounding job and everything just snowballs from there.
And the pay is unreal, almost $700k for having 9 babies over a 10+ year time frame, with extra bonuses for a natural birth. She soon gets put up in the company swank condo and is the recipient of tailored nutritional meals, a personal trainer, and other benefits that she's never had before.
She manages to hide this job from her friends and family, always 'traveling' during her pregnant periods, and connecting back in during her 'fallow' periods. Everything's going great until one of the executives is terminated, while Natalie is already pregnant with their baby. Thus begins a new kind of experiment and Natalie is forced to take matters into her own hands.
This book is timely, entertaining, and tender. You feel for Natalie and witness her growth over the years and how the ensuing events make her decide what she wants, not what others want. She's always gone along with the flow but made no strong decisions on her own behalf, but that changes quickly.
I will say the 2nd half of the book dragged a bit up until the ending but a great debut novel and a very timely topic!
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