
Fetal Position
Carolyn Huynh(Author)
Atria Books (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 8. December 2026
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-1-6680-9439-6 (ISBN)
Description
The author of the Good Morning America Book Club pick The Fortunes of Jaded Women returns with a speculative novel in which a burnt-out corporate employee joins a start-up that promises domestic ease—but as women begin to disappear, she must confront the violent cost of complicity.
In the near future, “high-value” intelligent women are recruited by a mysterious start-up called Hatch to become traditional wives to combat the historically low birthrate and the supposed male loneliness epidemic. In return, you’ll no longer have to work and you’ll get a subsidized house, land, and a robot butler that’ll do all domestic labor for you.
You simply trade in your corporate labor for child labor—through being inseminated with a male match’s sperm.
Lena Do is one of those women. She’s been stuck in corporate America for far too long. She hates her life. She has no nuclear family, no cousins, and no support system. The world is shrinking, and it’s not just the men who are lonely.
So when she receives an invitation to Hatch, she’s wooed by their promises of connection and happiness. But when women start disappearing and dying around her, she races against the clock to uncover the truth behind the company before she’s trapped forever—all the while trying to discern whose side her robot butler is really on.
With biting social critique, Fetal Position examines survival, complicity, artificial life, bodily autonomy, and the chilling reality of an increasingly data-driven world that optimizes who deserves love—and who deserves to live.
In the near future, “high-value” intelligent women are recruited by a mysterious start-up called Hatch to become traditional wives to combat the historically low birthrate and the supposed male loneliness epidemic. In return, you’ll no longer have to work and you’ll get a subsidized house, land, and a robot butler that’ll do all domestic labor for you.
You simply trade in your corporate labor for child labor—through being inseminated with a male match’s sperm.
Lena Do is one of those women. She’s been stuck in corporate America for far too long. She hates her life. She has no nuclear family, no cousins, and no support system. The world is shrinking, and it’s not just the men who are lonely.
So when she receives an invitation to Hatch, she’s wooed by their promises of connection and happiness. But when women start disappearing and dying around her, she races against the clock to uncover the truth behind the company before she’s trapped forever—all the while trying to discern whose side her robot butler is really on.
With biting social critique, Fetal Position examines survival, complicity, artificial life, bodily autonomy, and the chilling reality of an increasingly data-driven world that optimizes who deserves love—and who deserves to live.
More details
Language
English
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
445 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-6680-9439-6 (9781668094396)
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Carolyn Huynh is a novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. She loves writing about acerbic women who never learn from their mistakes but yearn for joy. Her debut novel, The Fortunes of Jaded Women, was a Good Morning America book club pick and picked as one of the best books of the year by NPR. A homegrown Californian, she resides in Los Angeles with her partner, her daughter, and her demon girl dog. Fetal Position is her third book. When she’s not writing, Carolyn daydreams about having iced coffee on a rooftop in Ho Chi Minh City.