Fallow: A Novel

by Sarah Anderson

What capitalism extracts when it runs out of hours.

For you if

you've traded your time for financial stability and started to wonder what you traded away

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Natalie needs money. The Company needs wombs. So she signs a contract: carry seven babies over ten years, and in between, enjoy total freedom — fallow periods with cash, a condo, no obligations. For a while, it works exactly as advertised. Fallow is the novel that takes the logic of the gig economy to its biological extreme, and it's funny and devastating in equal measure — because Natalie isn't a victim, she's a participant, and that's what makes it impossible to look away. When an unexpected turn pulls her out of the program and into an intentional community, Anderson asks the question underneath everything: what does it cost to sell yourself, and can you buy yourself back?

Where This Book Lives

Themes: bodily autonomy capitalist alienation

Fiction belongs here, and this is exactly the kind of fiction that earns it. Fallow does what the best dystopian novels do — takes the logic of a system we already live in and follows it one step further, until the horror is unmistakable. The dark humor keeps it from becoming a lecture; the ending doesn't let you off the hook by being bleak. This is the novel for anyone who's ever done the math on their own body and found it a reasonable trade.

Same pattern, different era

Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Sarah J. Maas