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A review by donaldcapone
The Farm by Joanne Ramos
3.0
Man, everything was in place for this to be a terrific book: the characters, the setting, the subject of a baby "farm." The sell copy leads the reader to believe it will be a dystopian tale about baby surrogacy, with evil people behind the scenes pulling the strings for some unknown nefarious purpose. But it never becomes that.
So what is the conflict, the overarching tension? Spoiler alert: there isn't one. The farm, Golden Oaks, is a well-run upstate NY institute that pays the surrogates (hosts) very well, all the health care is provided, along with excellent food and fitness classes. Did I mention they pay the surrogates a crap load of money? The woman, Mae, who runs the place is very good at her job, and runs it as a business, which it is. Imagine that. She wants to keep the hosts healthy and safe so the babies are born healthy, the clients are happy, and the hosts can be hired once again to be surrogates.
What passes for conflict in the novel is toward the end when Jane, who has a toddler of her own back home in NYC that she hasn't seen in months, loses contact with her older cousin who is taking care of the child. Fearing the worst, she concocts a plan with another host to escape Golden Oaks and finally see her child in person. Mae and her head of security are on the ball, however, and bring Jane back to the farm. There is a lame attempt at blackmail by Jane that goes nowhere. Then suddenly it is the epilogue two and a half years later and Jane has given birth to yet another surrogate baby—this time Mae's! And she is working for her as a nanny! Well, OK then. The end.
The novel was meant to be a commentary on class and immigration, on people with money who call the shots, and how hard it is to get ahead if you're in the lower class (and especially an immigrant), and how compromises are sometimes necessary. That part of the novel was well done, but so what? There still needs to be a bigger story.
So what is the conflict, the overarching tension? Spoiler alert: there isn't one. The farm, Golden Oaks, is a well-run upstate NY institute that pays the surrogates (hosts) very well, all the health care is provided, along with excellent food and fitness classes. Did I mention they pay the surrogates a crap load of money? The woman, Mae, who runs the place is very good at her job, and runs it as a business, which it is. Imagine that. She wants to keep the hosts healthy and safe so the babies are born healthy, the clients are happy, and the hosts can be hired once again to be surrogates.
What passes for conflict in the novel is toward the end when Jane, who has a toddler of her own back home in NYC that she hasn't seen in months, loses contact with her older cousin who is taking care of the child. Fearing the worst, she concocts a plan with another host to escape Golden Oaks and finally see her child in person. Mae and her head of security are on the ball, however, and bring Jane back to the farm. There is a lame attempt at blackmail by Jane that goes nowhere. Then suddenly it is the epilogue two and a half years later and Jane has given birth to yet another surrogate baby—this time Mae's! And she is working for her as a nanny! Well, OK then. The end.
The novel was meant to be a commentary on class and immigration, on people with money who call the shots, and how hard it is to get ahead if you're in the lower class (and especially an immigrant), and how compromises are sometimes necessary. That part of the novel was well done, but so what? There still needs to be a bigger story.