Worth a Read Yes
Length 336
Quick Review Golden Oaks is a gilded cage for the very wealthy to know their babies are getting the best of everything including surrogates.
The Farm is Joanne Ramos’ debut novel. Ramos balances the outlandish and the painfully possible reality the near future could hold for privileged and not-so-privileged parts of society.
Golden Oaks is a place where young, healthy, pretty, desperate-for-money women go to be Hosts for lavishly wealthy Clients in want of a baby or three. Located a few hours outside of New York City, it couldn’t be a safer or more beautiful place for a baby to grow under the watchful eye of trained health professionals looking after every aspect of the baby and the Host. Women of all colors, backgrounds, and ethnicities are hosts at Golden Oaks, which is not-so-lovingly referred to as The Farm by many of the Hosts.
The story follows four women from vastly different backgrounds. Mae is an American of Asian descent who manages Golden Oaks. Jane is a Filipino immigrant trying to support her daughter. Ate is Jane’s older, Filipino, immigrant cousin who nannies for upper class New York families. Reagan is a young, wealthy, white woman trying to make enough money to support her art career without her father’s money and control. The Farm dives into socioeconomic diversity and driving forces behind poverty, emigration, and choices women make based solely on need.
Ramos fills The Farm with interesting plots and characters. There is a 1984 Big Brother kind of feel to the novel that is simultaneously overtly creepy yet almost comforting. Though, the plot has a happier rather than completely realistic ending, there are very realistic aspects and problems to Golden Oaks that ground the plot in human emotion and complexity. Ramos doesn’t simplify difficult concepts nor does she try to explain them. She tells a story about motivation, poverty, and womanhood allowing the reader to take away what they will.
The quote “Sometimes a person has no choice but hard choices…” is incredibly insightful and the entire point of The Farm. Though simple in concept, it can be hard for people who have never experienced that kind of desperation to understand what women will do when their backs are against a wall looking into the mouth of a hippo.
The Farm is heartbreaking and infuriating. Joanne Ramos’ has quite a literary career ahead of her if this is what she brings to the table with her debut novel.
Memorable Quotes
“But babies are stronger than people think, and smarter.”
“the monumental efforts taken to make Clients feel food about outsourcing their pregnancies.”
“As if being a good girl and being strong willed were in conflict.”
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Title: The Farm
Author: Joanne Ramos
Publisher: Random House
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9781984853752
