by Eva Baltasar
First published 2024
The protagonist has grown tired of urban existence and feels a fierce desire to become pregnant. She leaves behind her comfortable city life for a remote farmhouse in the countryside. There she takes whatever work she can find, waiting tables and cleaning houses to survive. She sleeps with men she picks up randomly, hoping to conceive. The isolation brings unexpected challenges as she tends to orphaned lambs, fights off aggressive stray cats, and befriends a local shepherd who becomes her guide to rural life. She even turns to sex work when money runs short. Her pursuit of motherhood becomes entangled with a deeper hunger for authentic experience stripped of modern pretenses. The countryside proves far from the peaceful refuge she imagined. As winter approaches and her situation grows more desperate, her choices lead toward a breaking point that will test everything she believes about survival and desire.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, pursuit-of-desire
Setting: Countryside, Remote Farmhouse
Period: 21st-century
103 pages · Paperback · And Other Stories
Content warnings: sexual-content