Fallow by Sarah Anderson

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on September 15, 2026

Fallow is a light-hearted examination of surrogacy — and more broadly, the desire of employers to avoid granting maternity or FMLA leave to women who are about to give birth. I chuckled enough to make the book worthwhile, even if its examination of the targeted problem could have been more substantial.

When Fallow begins, Natalie Gallagher is in her early twenties. Natalie doesn’t like to work. Her job history is checkered; she’s probably never earned much more than minimum wage. She scores points for her honest rejection of values like hard work, motivation, and self-sufficiency, even if the absence of those values might make a reader less sympathetic about her self-inflicted woes.

Natalie needs a significant income to pay her student loans but has no desire to earn one. The highlight of her current gig in an HR call center is a guy who repeatedly calls in to complain, in lurid detail, about sexual harassment before masturbating as she repeats the details of the harassment to him. The call center job “confirmed two important truths: that there is no such thing as a good job, and that I had no interest in working. I wanted a life free of wake-up alarms. I wanted no threat of night shifts.” Natalie is lazy but her lack of ambition isn’t surprising, given the dead-end jobs for which she seems destined.

Because the call center job doesn’t pay enough to cover her expenses, Natalie also sells her plasma at the blood bank where her sister works. A nurse there shares an ad with Natalie that promises a generous salary for an applicant who has a “healthy lifestyle,” “birthing hips,” and “discretion.” Those qualifications are sufficiently vague that Natalie decides to apply.

The job turns out to be birth surrogacy. Natalie will be expected to carry another woman’s embryo to term while following a strict diet, exercise regime, and meditation schedule. She gets a bonus for a natural birth. Perks include a tenancy in a furnished luxury condo and a personal assistant who makes sure Natalie sticks to her exercise schedule and doesn’t eat or drink anything that might harm a fetus. A couple of babies will pay off Natalie’s loans. A few more will relieve her of the burden of work for years.

The corporation that hires Natalie makes surrogacy available to high-value female employees who might otherwise take a maternity leave or miss work because of a pregnancy-related illness. With no need for physical recovery, women return to work more quickly — “the goal is to reduce that critical window can from birth to office return.” This seems like an entirely plausible (albeit heartless) scheme to maximize employee productivity. I’m surprised Elon Musk hasn’t thought of it. Perhaps he’s trying instead to develop a robot that will replace birth mothers.

Natalie regards the gig as ideal. As the story moves along, Natalie has several babies. She takes to pregnancy naturally and makes use of the six month “fallow” period between pregnancies to eat unhealthy meals, party until dawn, and have random sexual encounters before she starts to get healthy again. Natalie loves her fallow period and its “three distinct phases: feast, fuck around, and get fertile.”

Natalie forms no particular attachment to the babies she delivers, although one employee spends so much time with her that Natalie believes the woman is sincere when she invites Natalie to spend summers at her home in the south of France. That invitation evaporates when the delivery, through no fault of Natalie, does not go as planned.

Natalie’s last pregnancy involves surrogacy for an executive named Jackie who is extraordinarily clingy. When Jackie loses her job, the corporation expects Natalie to make a choice that will devastate Jackie. The choice Natalie makes changes the course of the novel, starting with Natalie’s kidnapping and her forced residency in a commune. The change of direction sends the story into unexpected territory, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Sarah Anderson skewers corporate employers with her description of Natalie’s draconian contract terms and her NDAs. The novel’s satirical approach to surrogacy as a corporate benefit captures the reality that HR departments are more interested in saving money than in benefiting employees. The problems that pregnant employees encounter in the workplace are serious, but Fallow substitutes eye-rolling satire for a serious examination of pregnancy discrimination. That’s not necessarily a criticism — the novel is meant to be funny, not academic — but readers who hope for a more cogent discussion of the targeted issue might be disappointed.

Anderson also satirizes the sort of people who join communes to avoid the grasp of capitalism, then quarrel about how to make money and share labor. Living in the commune isn’t as nice as living in a luxury condo, although Natalie’s primary objection is that she’s expected to work for her daily meals. Natalie is a bit embarrassed by the sincerity of the commune dwellers, but she has no better option. Or, at least, she doesn’t want to expend the energy that leaving would require.

Fallow worked for me because Natalie, while not quite endearing, manages to make laziness seem like a virtue. Natalie’s ability to ride the waves of life as they wash over her is impressive. Her dedication to making the most of her fallow periods is almost admirable. Natalie does little to fight back when the company that hires her inevitably decides to screw her over, just as she makes little effort to escape when she is kidnapped, but she eventually realizes that she needs to make choices about her life rather than living with the choices that are forced upon her. In the end, Natalie is such a likable character that Anderson had me rooting for her.

RECOMMENDED

Switzy by Emma Cline

Published  by Random House on September 8, 2026

Switzy is the darkly humorous story of a man who copes with dementia by opting to end his life. Neither dementia nor suicide are funny, but dark humor offers a window into subjects that are difficult to address in fiction. The story is inherently sad but telling a sad story risks encroachment on maudlin territory. Lightening the story with guilty laughter allows the reader to sympathize with the protagonist without making a painful emotional investment in him.

David Hastings is seventy-something. He describes himself as addled. “That was the sort of old-fashioned euphemism. For the stutter in David’s mind. This shuffle of other disappeared things — images, facts, names, stretches of time significant and minor.” He holds onto phrases like “the quick brown fox” as proof to himself that his memory is not entirely gone. But he knows that his condition is worsening and that dementia will eventually rob him of everything — his memories, and with them, his identity.

David resolves to take control of his destiny. He discovers that a painless suicide is not an easy goal to achieve but finds a clinic in Switzerland that will facilitate his desire to die with dignity. Describing the content of letters that he wrote to various people, to be mailed after his death: “It was entirely my own decision, blah blah, signed off by these doctors blah.”

Hastings made some money during his life, for the last few decades as a company CFO. He lost that position after an audit revealed “the budget is off by nearly eight figures,” a discrepancy he was unable to explain. His job has always been to massage numbers, making them bigger or smaller to meet his employer’s needs, but he no longer understands account entries he doesn’t remember making.

David’s friend Stearns gave him another, less demanding position and let things slide until David noticed that people “were mad at him and he didn’t know why. He had missed a certain meeting — important. An important meeting! People avoided his eyes.” David coasted on his reputation for as long as possible, but even Stearns realizes he’s no longer capable of working.

“David had worked so frantically. Needless, his frantic work. And yet — they were all like him. Stearns and the others. Why did any of them fill their lives in this way? He had not needed to work as much, not nearly as much, and not with a feeling of such terror.” Through David, Emma Cline reminds us how sad it is that only on the last leg of our journey do we understand how misguided our priorities have been.

In one telling passage, Cline writes: “Everyone he knew had some sense of the unsatisfactory shape that their life had taken, bad decisions, a crucial opportunity that had been discarded. But choices that seemed, in retrospect, to be significant — they rarely were.”

Cline’s warning — that we should not wait for death to approach before we understand what in life is truly important — has value, but many books have made that same point. Fortunately, the novel works on other levels, as well. David has been tormented for years about his sexual desire for his oarding school friend Tom. They had an encounter, but David stood silently by while other students pulled a horrifying prank on Tom.  David wants to speak to Tom about his desire and guilt, but Tom, now married with children, has little desire to revisit the past — even if David were capable of coherent conversation.  

One recipient of David’s last letters will be his daughter Rebecca. He has concealed his dementia from her — she thinks he retired but has a consulting gig in Zurich — and continues to do so, substituting meaningless phrases for meaningful discussion, when he meets her for dinner in London before leaving for Switzerland. That we can drift so far from people we should love is another tragedy that Cline uses David's ordinary life to illustrate.

The story also has mysterious moments. David has two caregivers, but the one who is with him during his trips to London and Switzerland is Cody. David can’t always remember Cody’s name but refers to him as “the boy.” David is concerned that Cody is stealing from him (he has that concern about nearly everyone) but feels powerless to do anything to stop it. From time to time, the novel hints that Cody’s relationship to David is something more than a hired servant, even if David can't remember what it might be.

Cline’s writing style mimics David’s disintegrating mind. Phrases trail off, leaving thoughts unfinished. White space between thoughts represent the gaps in David’s train of thought. The text meanders, connecting disparate moments and distracted thoughts in ways that are meaningful only to David’s wandering mind. The text is remarkably effective in placing the reader inside David’s head.

The novel’s ambiguities, including Cody’s actual role in David’s life, might frustrate readers, but the ambiguity helps the reader understand what it is like to be David — a person who has lost confidence, who no longer understands what is expected of him. In the novel’s funniest scene, David is baffled by a naked woman who wants to seduce him. He simply has no idea how to respond.

The story is moving, while the dark humor keeps it from becoming oppressive. I suspect that many readers — like me — fear dementia more than we fear death. I applauded David’s resolve even as I was horrified by the assisted but uncoerced steps he took to end his life. I suspect that Switzy left an impression that will haunt me forever.

RECOMMENDED

Happy Labor Day!

Engines of Reason by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by tordotcom on September 1, 2026

Engines of Reason is a sequel to Elder Race. The story will probably make little sense to readers who aren’t familiar with the first book.

Earth colonized a number of planets before it collapsed. After Earth recovered, its anthropologists visited the colonized planets. Nyr is an anthropologist on the planet Sophos 4, whose inhabitants have forgotten their origin. The local governments are primitive and the largest one is ruled by a dynasty.

Nyr lives in a tower that communicates with an orbiting satellite, but he hasn’t heard from Earth in quite a long time. Prior to Elder Race, he spent most of his time sleeping and waiting for instructions from an Earth that might again have collapsed. In Elder Race, Nyr saves Sophos 4 from someone who has discovered how to activate machines from Earth and use them for destructive ends. Because Nyr can control monstrous technology, he is viewed as a wizard.

Engines of Reason picks up the story many years after Elder Race ends. A young woman who implored Nyr to help her in Elder Race learned some secrets of his wizardry but disregarded his jealous advice not to marry a lout. Nyr and Lyn have been estranged ever since, but they reunite when Sendra appears, claiming to be a wizard.

Sendra is a charlatan, but the person who empowered him with the secrets of technology — Ilmoth the Elder — seems to be Nyr’s equal. Ilmoth is determined to conquer (or destroy) Sophos 4, and Nyr will need to team with Lyn and her daughter Sara to save the planet.

Taken together, Elder Race and Engines of Reason impress me as some of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s best work. The theme of an undeveloped society mistaking technology for magic is nicely developed, the relationship between Nyr and Lyn is complex, and the mystery of Ilmoth’s ability to control technology adds a new dimension to the story. The theme of self-sacrifice that made Nyr such an endearing character in Elder Race is reinforced in the sequel.

Science fans who haven’t read Elder Race might want to pick up that book and follow it with the sequel. Fans of the first novel will likely enjoy Engines of Reason as a tasty new treat.

RECOMMENDED

Agrippa by Robert Harris

Published by Doubleday on September 1, 2026

Fiction that adheres closely to history is a fun way to learn about the past. Agrippa is consistent with my sketchy understanding of ancient history, making it both a useful refresher and a source of new knowledge. The story indulges in a bit of speculation about events of the past, but even that is grounded in the educated guesswork of scholarship.

The book purports to be a memoir penned by Marcus Agrippa as he nears his death from a festering wound. Agrippa’s mother died giving birth to him. Raised by his father in Rome, Agrippa was befriended at school by a weak boy named Octavius after Agrippa protected him from bullies. Agrippa discovers that Octavius is the nephew of Julius Caeser, “the mighty conqueror of Gaul.” For the rest of his life, Agrippa will be a loyal friend to, and living in the shadow of, Octavius.

Familiar names litter the text, including Cicero, Cleopatra, and Mark Antony, but this story belongs to Agrippa. Still, I could not help but compare Caeser to a current but less successful wannabe dictator when Agrippa explains that “the Senate enacted a law declaring [Caeser] a god," a law Caeser celebrates with gold statutes, including one of Cleopatra in the Temple of Venus. I guess self-veneration and a love of gold are common to authoritarian rulers. It was nevertheless heartening to read that the failure of sycophants to warn Caeser of his declining popularity is “how power destroys itself.”

Agrippa and Octavius “grew to maturity together, the years passing to the distant drumbeat of Caesar’s victories.” Although Agrippa’s father is no fan of Caeser, he encourages Agrippa to ask Octavius for a favor. Agrippa’s brother Lucius served in the Republican Army and was taken prisoner in one of Caesar’s endless wars. Agrippa’s father wants Caesar to show mercy to Lucius, a request that Caesar unexpectedly grants. Yet Agrippa breaks with his father because of his admiration for Caesar and devotion to Octavius. Agrippa promises Caeser that he will protect Octavius, whose frailty prevents him from being the warrior that Agrippa is destined to become.

The first significant event in Agrippa’s life is the death of Julius Caeser on the Ides of March. Octavius inherits three quarters of Caeser’s estate but accepting that inheritance means Octavius can never rest. If he does not continue to acquire power, his rivals will catch up with him and put him to death — and Agrippa with him.

Octavius embarks on a plan to become a ruler to rival Julius. Octavius is a cunning politician who uses Agrippa’s military skill to help him assemble the legions he needs to conquer his rivals. The story speeds through a number of Agrippa’s military campaigns, often waged with soldiers who were loyal to Caeser, soldiers eager to avenge his death.

Marc Antony is Octavius’ most dangerous rival, particularly after he gains control of the state treasury. The novel highlights Agrippa’s role in military battles against Antony’s legions, as well as Octavius’ political machinations. I thought it was particularly interesting that soldiers often followed the leader who paid them the most money rather than the leader they thought would be best for the Roman Empire. Robert Harris also makes clear that the citizens of Rome are tired of endless wars and of the leaders who wage them — not that Octavius cares about their concerns.

Harris details the political machinations of Octavius and his advisers, the military triumphs of Agrippa, the shifting alliances that bring Marc Antony and his legions into and out of the service of Rome, the formation of the Triumvirate that will rule the Empire, and the harm caused to Antony’s reputation by his dalliance with Cleopatra. The accomplishments that give Agrippa the greatest pride are not military conquests but civic improvements, from public baths that give the public a chance to relax to aqueducts that deliver fresh water to various parts of Gaul. Octavius, on the other hand, thinks the public would benefit from more statues of Octavius. That’s apparently how authoritarian leaders think, then and now.

On a more personal note, Agrippa writes about his marriages and divorces, some dictated by Octavius to better cement political alliances between families. Over time, Agrippa becomes Octavius’ greatest general yet comes to resent the credit Octavius takes for Agrippa’s achievements. Near the end of his life, when he realizes that his wife has been serially unfaithful to him and that he will have no legacy of his own, he wonders whether it has all been worth it. The story accordingly has a bittersweet ending.

Harris’ take on ancient history is entertaining, but its greater worth may lie in the lessons Agrippa imparts. The general understands that “wars would not occur unless they were fought by men too young and reckless to understand the risks they are taking.” The populace will always tire of endless war, no matter how righteous the causes appear to be, and will eventually recognize the difference between a righteous war of defense and a war that is waged only to further the ends of the powerful.

Agrippa realizes that the notion of sharing power is nice in theory, but the concept that a leader will “hold power for a limited period, sharing it with others, and then be obliged to surrender it or face prosecution” is “no longer operative” when “force rules all.” That lesson too has relevance to modern America. Backbiters like Cicero — “brilliant and duplicitous and entirely self-interested” — have counterparts in any number of modern politicians. Even the notion of blockading a port to deprive an enemy of resources has its current parallel.

A book based on history (that is not an alternative history) holds few surprises — unless we count Agrippa’s speculation that he is the illegitimate son of Julian Caeser (Harris credits an historian for that theory while acknowledging the absence of strong evidence that it is true). While Agrippa may therefore lack the dramatic tension of strong fiction, it recreates the drama of one of history’s most eventful periods, while adding convincing characterization to one of history’s most important (but lesser known) characters.

RECOMMENDED