A darkly funny satire about a young woman hired as a corporate surrogate, exploring issues of gender equality, bodily autonomy, and late stage capitalism.

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Twenty three year old Natalie is disillusioned with capitalism. At her call center job for workplace harassment complaints, she spends her days listening to the worst of toxic corporate behavior. With no insurance and in desperate need of oral surgery, she goes from selling her plasma to selling her body as the first ever corporate surrogate for a tech giant known only as “The Company.” Billed as a revolutionary feminist benefit, the program allows high powered women (and their employer) to avoid the physical and professional cost of pregnancy and maternity leave by farming out Natalie’s womb for seven surrogate pregnancies over a decade. In return, Natalie’s life is completely paid for with all her needs taken care of.

In some ways Natalie seems like the perfect vessel for this job. She has no ambition and wants to put in as little effort in life as possible. Yet she’s willing to give birth naturally seven times. Natalie is a complex character and I think her journey would be more powerful if we got closer to her as readers. Perhaps it’s a deliberate choice by the author to keep Natalie as empty a vessel as possible, but I wanted to know what is going on in her mind as she gives over her body and the babies it produces.

When the surrogate job is no longer an option for her, she has to give birth to herself, as one of the characters puts it, in order to figure out what she wants in life. Oddly, this takes place on a commune where she finds community with other women. I really liked the first half of the book, but the pivot to the commune makes it feel like a completely different book and less of a darkly funny corporate satire, which is what appealed to me to begin with.

There is a lot to unpack in this book with themes of gender equality, labor and work, capitalism, and bodily autonomy. Fallow is an impressive debut novel that I suspect will generate a lot of buzz. Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC. All opinions are my own.