Three Books I'm Reading Now, 10/5/26 Edition
The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm reading Sarah Anderson's debut novel about a corporation's surrogate mother, a darkly humorous sendup of the ultimate capitalist state, Fallow; I'm listening to Ilona Bannister's fascinatingly structured novel of five characters on a train platform, one of whom will soon die, Five; and I'm listening to Isaac Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays, Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional.
What are you reading, bookworms?
01 Fallow by Sarah Anderson
Natalie is in a soul-crushing job at a call center when is offered what feels like the perfect opportunity for short-term sacrifice and long-term financial gain: she becomes the first corporate-sponsored surrogate mother. She's soon enlisted for a ten-year period of heavily regulated pregnancy conditions and tasked with a goal of seven births, all so that the company's executives can build families without losing productivity due to physical challenges around conceiving and carrying babies.
In between pregnancies Natalie is allowed fallow periods when she is wild, carefree, hedonistic, and able to pay for any distraction she chooses. She seesaws from periods of prescribed meal, exercise, meditation, propaganda-building, and sleep regimens to weeks- and months-long free-for-alls where she is an unregulated young adult. Throughout her years of surrogate work for the corporation, she has plenty of time to reflect upon the person she wants to be and the future she wants to live out.
This is a darkly funny satire of capitalism within a plausible reality of hyperregulated systems around body autonomy, fertility, productivity, corporate party lines, and what happens if literally everything is for sale.
This is the author's debut novel.
02 Five by Ilona Bannister
Five begins in medias res, with five disparate characters waiting for a train. The omniscient narrator speaks directly to the reader to explain that. unbeknownst to the characters, one of the five will die when the train arrives.
But before we find out which of the potential demises the story is headed toward, the novel tracks back through the lives of each character--in some cases also fast-forwarding to the future (a spoiler, as we can therefre eliminate those characters from potential imminent death in the present-day timeline).
Each of the protagonists is far from perfect; selfishness, chance, missteps, and other circumstances shape each of their lives--and some characters' paths intersect before the fateful moments at the station.
I'm listening to this novel as an audiobook through Libby and my public library.
Ilona Bannister is also the author of When I Ran Away.
03 Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional by Isaac Fitzgerald
In his memoir-in-essay-form Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Isaac Fitzgerald traces his life from his unlikely conception (his parents were married...but to other people, and each parent was using birth control during their affair), through a volatile childhood, to a drifting young adulthood.
He doesn't pull punches, recounting a gritty young existence surrounded by violence, uncertainty, and a lack of structure. His path as a young adult is unconventional and at times he lives on the fringes of societal norms. Yet he remains thoughtful about his place in the world, struggles with body dysmorphia, and tries to forgive his parents' many failings.
I'm listening to an audiobook version of this title through Libby and my public library.
Fitzgerald's newest book is the nonfiction American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed. In November, I'm going to hear Isaac Fitzgerald speak at a library foundation event.
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