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 workplace harassment call center, 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 in-house surrogate. The Company pitches it as an opportunity to help women access greater gender equity, motherhood without maternity leave. Finally, she will be adequately—generously—compensated.

For years, her every need is stacks of healthy meals in the refrigerator of a luxury condo, fitness coaches and nutritionists, around-the-clock healthcare. Between deliveries, she takes time off—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 and drags her deep into another social experiment. There she meets new questions about her future, her freedom, her purpose, and what she can expect from the world.

Woundingly funny and deeply moving, Sarah Anderson’s Fallow is a tender, hilarious, alarmingly real vision of a woman balancing on the knife-edge of capitalism as she comes to realize who she wants to be.

This was another case of me not knowing much about the book before jumping in, other than the fact that a lot of people had been raving about it. I ended up somewhere on the fence. I didn’t hate it, but it didn’t grab me the way I hoped it would.

The book focuses on a woman named Natalie who works at a call center that handles workplace harassment complaints. She spends her days listening to people describe how bad their workplace is while also being less than happy with her own situation. She has student loans, a toothache she can’t afford to fix, and no real financial plan or clear way out of debt aside from selling plasma on the side for a little extra cash. Then a mysterious flyer at the blood bank leads her to a company that’s looking for its first in-house surrogate, and Natalie fits the bill. The pay is generous, the condo they put her up in is super fancy, and she gets meals, trainers, and medical care around the clock. All she has to do is pop out a few kids over the course of a few years and she’ll be compensated well. But right before her contract wraps up, a staffing decision shakes everything loose and sends her into a different kind of experiment altogether.

The first half (or maybe a little more) of this one was enjoyable. I really liked Natalie. She was tired of just trying to survive, so she took a job that would finally pay her what she needed, even though the work itself wasn’t exactly ideal. In her shoes, money and survival mattered more than anything else, and honestly, I probably would have done the same. I feel like we’re all Natalie in a way. We just want to survive while also enjoy life.

The book does a great job of looking at the lengths people will go to just to pay the bills and hold on to a little dignity. It takes place in a world run by corporations and by wealthy people who are trying to get even richer (sound familiar?) so it didn’t seem that far off from reality. After a while, though, it all started to run together. The time jumps threw me more than once, and I had to stop and figure out where I was in the story.

The last 1/3 or so is where things started going down the drain for me. It took the story in a direction that made me lose interest, and by the final pages I was kind of over it. But yes, I understand why some people liked this one. There’s a lot to chew on, and the early sections work well. For me, though, it grew old after a while and then turned in a direction that didn’t hold my attention. It was good but not great.

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