This is the penultimate week of the book club. And next week, I want to share some of the discussion questions you have. So drop them below!
*spoiler alert*
If you haven’t finished the book and you are squeamish about spoilers. Stop reading now.
Okay, now that’s over.
At one point in the book, Jane goes to a play and makes her escape. The play is very clearly My Fair Lady which is based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion.
I’m fascinated by this allusion to Pygmalion in a story where men are largely absent but still immensely powerful. But in a way, the book is a story about women, creating the ideal woman, either through outsourcing labor (literally), or creating the perfect incubating host. Pygmalion in Greek mythology was a man who hated real women, so he created a statue of one and fell in love with it.
The book is preoccupied with creating perfect conditions and perfect people and then watching as human nature gets in the way. Jane is in some ways the “perfect” woman (quiet, compliant, hard-working, never complains), who randomly makes these impulsive, emotional choices that almost ruin her life. Mae and her clients are obsessed with creating the perfect children inside the perfect hosts’ bodies.
In some ways, you can argue the experiment of the book is women trying to create the perfect conditions for themselves. Creating themselves into perfect beings. But there are still men in the shadows of this book. Leon lurking, controlling, the man with the money and power. Troy who drives the getaway car and gives Jane the leverage. Mae’s fiancée Ethan seems so non-existent until the end when he suggests maybe she carry their baby herself (which weirdly pissed me off).
Talk to me about Pygmalion and perfection and where are all the men? Also, if you got to the ending, how do you feel about it? And let me know what questions you want me to ask next week as we wrap up the discussion.
Men in the shadows ... they have the power to allow success or to tear everything down. It's not just Leon -- it's also the men who marry women (Ate, Jane) and leave them destitute, forcing them into the situations where they cross ethical lines.
Right? Like WHERE ARE THE MEN?!! They've kind of helped create and cause this situation but don't have to deal with the fall out and the repercussions. It reminds me of reproductive debates when commenters say this is a women's problem and sideline it as a women's issue. Also, *looks through the comments for the men participating in this discussion, hears only crickets*
Ooh, yes! I had a fight one time with a friend after Obamacare required equal costs across genders. He asserted that since women get pregnant, they should have to pay the additional costs. I pointed out that it isn't like men aren't involved in creating that pregnancy, and women are ALREADY paying a physical cost, why should they have to pay a financial cost for something that is only half (or less!) their responsibility?
Another missing man is the rich Chinese lady's husband. I assumed she wasn't married, until finally near the end when a husband gets mentioned. Which is fascinating in itself - what's the story there, given the usual gender politics of China?? She was definitely a story I would have liked to know, though I'm sure that would have made the book onerous in some ways.
The discussion between Leon and Mae about where to find Hosts -- goes to the point that capitalism needs an underclass; it needs poverty to exist and succeed. A little Flyover Country shoutout:
"But there must exist lower-middle-class white girls -- think wholesome Midwesterners; think state-school grads -- who show well but who have no viable career prospects."
I think its a matter of the options that are available the higher up you are on the class/wealth chart. Its one of the reasons Regan gets her bonus (and a bonus bonus) while Jane doesn't.
We we learn that Mae worked at the Holloway Club and all the people she hired there, I realized she had a lot in common with Ate, who was the person to go to for help, work, money, a place to stay, etc.
I didn't like that the writer put that flashback of Ate at the end. I get why it's there - to humanize her and show us her motivations - but I feel like she pulled a fast one on the reader by placing that flashback so close to the end of the book. I would have appreciated the insight into her character much earlier on.
Yeah, I felt very, back and forth with Ate so much in the book. And then when we finally learn everything about her it feels so late. And like how do you truly grapple with the harm she did or might have done in the name of service to her children? How do you grapple with the harm anyone might do in service to their children?
And I sincerely like how we see that Ate is as driven for Roy (Did I get his name right?) as Jane is for Amalia, and maybe that was Joanne Ramos's intent - to show they're the same. But putting it at the end seems like an editor's mistake and I ended up feeling manipulated.
Well, it was a near-death scene, and people do tend to hallucinate back to early periods of their lives in those situations. So I think the scene did belong there, though it interrupted the pace of the main narrative. I had already gotten the point that Ate's motivations were driven by Roy's situation.
It's that classic misalignment of means and ends. We feel more sympathetic for Ate, rightfully so, her story has tragedy, but can also detest the ways she was using others to reach her own goals.
I've only read to page 250 as I've tried to take this book in chunks to stay up-to-date each week instead of reading through, though I desperately wanted to. So I choose not to read the spoiler-including blurb here.
But as for the questions I think the most interesting, for me as a man, is the portrayal of men in this book. Though the men do not narrate the story they still craft it.
Jane's Ex, Billy - He seems to not care at all about Jane and Amalia. Cheating on Jane in such an open way that his family knows but they all keep it from Jane. The situation leaves Jane with little choice but to leave; putting her in the desperate situation where she agrees to an opportunity like the Farm in the first place.
The rich couples who hire the nannies often have the men earning the money and the wives wielding the money and associated power to exploit others. (Mrs Richards "documentary", Mrs. Herrera moving the goalposts and not paying Ate more)
Roy, through no fault of his own (IIRC), is the impetus of Ate coming to America and certainly the source behind her drive to make money where she, like the rich folks, exploits others for her gain. I don't see this being the case if Roy were not disabled.
Leon - Coincidence that Mae is the only female lead of a business unit at Holloway and that business unit is for a gestational retreat? Also by funding this endeavor without his involvement and okaying it doesn't exist. He also prevents Mae from getting on the 30-under-30 list that she so desperately wanted.
Regan's father - His pressure on Regan to attain a "prestigious" career instead of encouraging her to explore things on her own led her to join the Farm. Though the motives don't quite line up for me. Was it really be an investment banker or a host on the Farm? Having grown up wealthy it doesn't seem that Regan is willing to be a struggling artist or even take a "normal" job that would support herself and allow her to be in control of her destiny without exploiting her body to the extent she is on the farm.
Julio - By leaking information to the Hosts through Lisa, in exchange for sex, he inadvertently drives a lot of the Host drama that ensues. Overweight man knocking into Mae at the airport - Not a key element of the story but he's one of the only non-named people mentioned in the story who interacts with a named character.
Mae's fiance, Ethan - I admittedly do not recall much about this guy.
Page 184 here and yeah, Billy's family is weirdly poorly drawn. I might have thought they were looking down on Jane for being a Filipina, but then we find out that the new girlfriend (who also hates Jane apparently) is Puerto Rican? It's never clear to me what Jane even saw in Billy. A means of escaping from her mother, I guess, except the main issue Jane seems to have with her mother is her fantastically poor judgment when it comes to men.
Regan's weird relationship with money is also demonstrated in the scene where she straight up tries to give Jane her bonus, oblivious to the fact that Jane's own bonus is way bigger than hers. It's not really clear why she even wants money, although to be fair, Regan's general obliviousness is an important part of her character. It's entirely plausible that she didn't even think it through.
I see a lot of people saying the characters seemed happy at the end. I agree, but - for some reason I felt like there was something bubbling under the surface for Jane. I read it to mean that she’d inevitably make another “bad” decision (I say “bad” because I kind of understood some of those massive decisions and can’t say I wouldn’t do the same) that would blow everything up. I also think Mae is working on borrowed time and eventually things will fall apart with Leon/the farm.
Is this a bad reading? I don’t think there was one thing that made me think this, more the culmination of the whole story.
No, I don't think that's a bad reading. I think everyone who said the characters seemed "happy" are also saying that happiness is an unsettled happiness. That leaves the reader ill-at-ease, that this is a temporary lull and there is more to come
I’m struck by the disparity in outcomes for breaking the rules. Jane is repeatedly described as conscientious and a “rule follower.” When she strays, the outcomes are disastrous for her. When Reagan breaks the rules, she is both protected by her privilege and rewarded outrageously. No human can follow all of the rules and despite being a “rule follower,” Jane breaks them. This reality underlies the precariousness of Jane’s new position with Mae. The brief scene of her using her cell phone while caring for Victor is such a foreboding flick to this.
I did not like the ending for Jane. It may have been the best outcome for her in this ficton, but I had wanted better for her and I wanted her out of the surrogate racket. Eh, well, it was written so she seemed content, but working for Mae? Yeesh.
Right? The above commenter said it made her feel unsettled and I completely agree. I think it helps that the author has said she didn't want to leave the reader with answers only questions. And I really have to question why I hate this outcome for her.
For me, I think it's because it seems like Jane has given up her personal autonomy and a big hunk of control of her life to Mae, which makes me want to shriek, "Run away!" But Jane has chosen what feels like safety for herself and her child, and it's hard to argue with that, even if I don't like how it feels.
But consider who Jane is and her background. In this “great nation” of ours she does not have autonomy. She has very limited choices. She is a victim with little agency. I thought this book did a terrific job of portraying immigrants with their circumstantial lack of opportunity. We cannot judge Jane through our middle class eyes. What we have in common with Jane (and Ate) is our fierce devotion to our children.
I felt like this too. Also, everybody is so focused on Amalia's development. Is it too late for Jane to get educated and have a career that doesn't involve selling her body? I also didn't think she would really want to carry a baby for Mae. And it seems too intimate to also have her be the daycare provider.
Is Jane shifting into a kind of indentured servitude? She certainly isn't (literally) forced to stay with Mae; Ramos includes the tidbit that Jane is making a backup plan should Mae let her go. But it really seems like there is no request Mae could make that Jane would say no to. What does she owe Mae? Did Jane take Ate's advice about appeasing rich employers to close to heart?
Mae is the most likely to work for change in people - in the women she hires as hosts. Creating an idealized experience for babies that treats women as vessels. I think Ate does this too somewhat, in how she molds Jane and other women to be the ideal servants.
It occurred to me that there is an underlying assumption that pregnancy is just a simple thing. You get pregnant, you grow a baby, you give birth. So, when people say just give the baby up for adoption, they don’t realize that you still have to go through pregnancy and you might have complications. You might die. You might end up with a mental health issue. You might end up with ripped up lady parts. In this book, it’s like they just assume these young healthy women can easily carry a pregnancy, give birth and be on their way. And how lucky they are to be able to make money for something so simple. Golden Oaks focuses on the good parts about a new baby, but doesn’t understand the gravity of all of the issues that come up with having a baby. If you give a baby up for adoption, you cannot guarantee the family that adopts them will be good. It makes me think of anti-abortion activists who say "give the baby up for adoption." What if you lose your job because you are pregnant and you have other children at home and your husband leaves you and you have extreme morning sickness for 9 months and no paid leave to recover? I had relatively easy pregnancies and I enjoyed being pregnant after the first three months of nausea. That said, it wasn't easy to juggle part-time grad school and a full-time job with my first baby and then juggle being a working mom with other children with my second and third babies. I got postpartum depression after my second baby. Thank goodness I didn't have to go back to work until my baby was 4 months old. Thank goodness I had support and resources. It just isn't as simple as this book makes it out to be. Again, I sound critical but I loved the book.
This is one of the reasons it angers me when people propose adoption as an alternative to abortion. Adoption is an alternative to *parenting*. It doesn’t make you unpregnant.
Another thing was the author never addressed the number of embryos that one huge client had implanted. That seemed unethical. Unless I got that wrong. I don't have the book anymore.
Yeah I feel like there was a big lead up to the mysterious client and then … we don’t really find out much? I felt that way about the whole ending- there were so many interesting things left hanging (what happened to Troy’s video? Why didn’t Regan give her bonus to Jane after Jane’s got pulled? Was it really the million dollar bonus? Did Regan ever confront Callie? Was Mae’s big project really just opening another farm?) I was really disappointed with the ending- it just tied up Jane and Mae’s stories in a big, unsatisfying bow.
I found this book complex and fascinating in its portrayal of women who have so internalized the patriarchy/power/abuse of men that the men no longer need to be immediately present to be oppressive. The work of the male characters (from Leon to Billy to Ethan to Regan's dad to Troy, and even Julio) to keep their centrality and power is largely done by the women themselves, who contort their lives and bodies and behaviors to the expectations of the male gaze. Also, this is not a judgement-I do the same, and try desperately to untangle myself from enforcing patriarchy on my own body and life, but it's hard to survive (especially as a single mom) without doing so.
Mixed feelings about the book as a whole. I liked the idea of exploring the theme of "for women to succeed, they need to outsource motherhood" (first by hiring baby nannies but then by outsourcing even the pregnancy with the use of surrogates), and that becomes rich women 'liberating' themselves at the cost of poorer women. But I'd have liked to have at least one character say or acknowledging that maybe the fathers of these children could also be expected to help with childcare.
I also wasn't a fan of the late redemption of Ate, it felt a bit like a bit too much like forced emotional manipulation.
I feel like Ate’s “redemption”fell flat for me. The book talks about the multiple properties she bought - and how at least some of her children were not working themselves, while she worked herself to an early grave. It’s like she fell into the trap of “never enough” money. How much better off would her children have been to have HER - not just money? She fully expected Jane to do the same thing and leave her newborn for 9 months.
Because after so much lying and manipulation and misunderstanding and terror, the outcome was Jane living with and working for Mae -- still at an arm's length and within a strong power dynamic. Maybe brutal isn't quite the right word, but I thought the author really made you confront all those emotions and sit with them uncomfortably in a perfect way.
Oh that I feel. Yeah, the end left me very unsettled. It was this pastoral, weird, uncomfortable peace, that I didn't love, but the characters seemed happy....and it made me feel queasy in a way.
Why is Mae so interested in Jane, and in Amalia? It almost seemed like Mae admired Jane in a kindred-spirit-way (strong woman doing things her way in a man’s world? I don’t know...). And Mae seemed downright obsessed with Mali: why? As a strong girl who was going to go her own way? There was some weird needy dynamic going on there that I can’t figure out.
I also agree that brutal is the right word. Towards the end I found myself wanting to punch Mae or scream at Jane to stand up for herself. Her compliance makes her a doormat that the manipulative Mae gets to stomp all over. It was terribly uncomfortable to read.
But I also appreciate Ramos bringing out those feelings. It's the parts in books that bring our real emotional reaction that make me like them so much.
Would it have been possible for the surrogacy center to be more transparent? If so, maybe Jane wouldn't have had to "run away" to check on her child? Shouldn't that have been something the center took care of?
How would I like to see the ending of the book change?
Is this book ripe for a sequel? What about movie or TV script?
How could the surrogacy centers branch out? Harvesting (legally?) organs? What other "parts" might poor folks be able to sell for survival? Is there a way for any of this to be ethical?
I am really interested in the extent to which the book - by which I mean Mae's account - is reliable. Jane in particular got told a lot of things, like that the tick had Lyme disease. I was deeply distrustful of almost everything Mae told Jane or any of the other hosts, but it was never revealed whether that was the right take or not. Like the repeatedly-canceled visits with Amalia... was it actually the client who insisted on canceling it? I don't think so. But the tick was less clear.
Finished the book on Saturday and it's been on my mind a lot. Shades of "Orphan Black", The Handmaid's Tale (book), and The Stepford Wives (book). It seems to me that in all of these stories, men are the strategists and women are the tacticians.
Ramos stuck the landing: Mae gets what she wants, Jane gets a home for her & Amalia. Regan is free of her dad. Ate is free of her burdens. It's a chilling ending in many ways because the reader can assume The Farm will only expand its reach, and yet the ending strikes me as completely logical, too.
Just finished the book and agree with so much that's already been written here. Am still digesting the ending. I must say I'm so relieved that Amalia proved to be strong, independent, healthy in the end. I was worried the book was building toward some tragedy befalling her, which would have just reinforced the trope that terrible things happen to children when their mothers work. (Like in movies when someone dies while the unmarried characters are (gasp!) having sex.) Ramos is clearly smarter than that.
I read this book before but did audiobook this time. It was very good. I can't decide if the "happy" ending is an actual attempt to be like "no but it's fine! It's so fine!" OR if it's an attempt to be extra creepy...the ending trying to be happy makes it seem like everyone is just fine with this whole thing which is the creepiest part of all?
Throughout the book (maybe it was just the title) I kept waiting for something (supernatural? psychologically twisty?) to happen. I think this is maybe because I recently finished Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang and kept seeing parallels to The Farm. As much as I did not like the ending, I don't know that there was any other outcome for Jane.
I have finished it. KUDOs to Ramos for writing such a great first time novel! My take-away is going to be about classism and its tie to racism in this country. Ramos has given us a good picture of the extremely wealthy and the very poor; the immigrants who sacrifice time with their own children in order to make a living caring for Americans with great means in order to give their own families a better future. And, I, a middle class person, can read about it all. I have very often thought about the quizzes that Ruby Payne includes in her book A Framework for Understanding Poverty-- could you survive in poverty, could you survive in the middle class, could you survive in wealth. That’s when I realized I am definitely in the middle and don’t understand how either of the other two categories work. Ramos’s book gives us a another look at how those two worlds operate.
Just to add, I just looked up reviews of Ruby Payne’s book and some organizations really trash it. But, her quizzes really gave me something to think about.
Men in the shadows ... they have the power to allow success or to tear everything down. It's not just Leon -- it's also the men who marry women (Ate, Jane) and leave them destitute, forcing them into the situations where they cross ethical lines.
Right? Like WHERE ARE THE MEN?!! They've kind of helped create and cause this situation but don't have to deal with the fall out and the repercussions. It reminds me of reproductive debates when commenters say this is a women's problem and sideline it as a women's issue. Also, *looks through the comments for the men participating in this discussion, hears only crickets*
It's like the 1939 movie "The Women," where there are no men to be seen in the film, but they're the catalysts for everything.
Maybe that's another way the surrogacy centers aim for perfection -- by almost taking men out of the equation?
Ooh, yes! I had a fight one time with a friend after Obamacare required equal costs across genders. He asserted that since women get pregnant, they should have to pay the additional costs. I pointed out that it isn't like men aren't involved in creating that pregnancy, and women are ALREADY paying a physical cost, why should they have to pay a financial cost for something that is only half (or less!) their responsibility?
Another missing man is the rich Chinese lady's husband. I assumed she wasn't married, until finally near the end when a husband gets mentioned. Which is fascinating in itself - what's the story there, given the usual gender politics of China?? She was definitely a story I would have liked to know, though I'm sure that would have made the book onerous in some ways.
The discussion between Leon and Mae about where to find Hosts -- goes to the point that capitalism needs an underclass; it needs poverty to exist and succeed. A little Flyover Country shoutout:
"But there must exist lower-middle-class white girls -- think wholesome Midwesterners; think state-school grads -- who show well but who have no viable career prospects."
Yes - there is a lot about class and poverty and the “less poor” vs “more rich” - I just couldn’t quite suss out what it was she was saying
I think its a matter of the options that are available the higher up you are on the class/wealth chart. Its one of the reasons Regan gets her bonus (and a bonus bonus) while Jane doesn't.
We we learn that Mae worked at the Holloway Club and all the people she hired there, I realized she had a lot in common with Ate, who was the person to go to for help, work, money, a place to stay, etc.
I didn't like that the writer put that flashback of Ate at the end. I get why it's there - to humanize her and show us her motivations - but I feel like she pulled a fast one on the reader by placing that flashback so close to the end of the book. I would have appreciated the insight into her character much earlier on.
Yeah, I felt very, back and forth with Ate so much in the book. And then when we finally learn everything about her it feels so late. And like how do you truly grapple with the harm she did or might have done in the name of service to her children? How do you grapple with the harm anyone might do in service to their children?
And I sincerely like how we see that Ate is as driven for Roy (Did I get his name right?) as Jane is for Amalia, and maybe that was Joanne Ramos's intent - to show they're the same. But putting it at the end seems like an editor's mistake and I ended up feeling manipulated.
Well, it was a near-death scene, and people do tend to hallucinate back to early periods of their lives in those situations. So I think the scene did belong there, though it interrupted the pace of the main narrative. I had already gotten the point that Ate's motivations were driven by Roy's situation.
It's that classic misalignment of means and ends. We feel more sympathetic for Ate, rightfully so, her story has tragedy, but can also detest the ways she was using others to reach her own goals.
I've only read to page 250 as I've tried to take this book in chunks to stay up-to-date each week instead of reading through, though I desperately wanted to. So I choose not to read the spoiler-including blurb here.
But as for the questions I think the most interesting, for me as a man, is the portrayal of men in this book. Though the men do not narrate the story they still craft it.
Jane's Ex, Billy - He seems to not care at all about Jane and Amalia. Cheating on Jane in such an open way that his family knows but they all keep it from Jane. The situation leaves Jane with little choice but to leave; putting her in the desperate situation where she agrees to an opportunity like the Farm in the first place.
The rich couples who hire the nannies often have the men earning the money and the wives wielding the money and associated power to exploit others. (Mrs Richards "documentary", Mrs. Herrera moving the goalposts and not paying Ate more)
Roy, through no fault of his own (IIRC), is the impetus of Ate coming to America and certainly the source behind her drive to make money where she, like the rich folks, exploits others for her gain. I don't see this being the case if Roy were not disabled.
Leon - Coincidence that Mae is the only female lead of a business unit at Holloway and that business unit is for a gestational retreat? Also by funding this endeavor without his involvement and okaying it doesn't exist. He also prevents Mae from getting on the 30-under-30 list that she so desperately wanted.
Regan's father - His pressure on Regan to attain a "prestigious" career instead of encouraging her to explore things on her own led her to join the Farm. Though the motives don't quite line up for me. Was it really be an investment banker or a host on the Farm? Having grown up wealthy it doesn't seem that Regan is willing to be a struggling artist or even take a "normal" job that would support herself and allow her to be in control of her destiny without exploiting her body to the extent she is on the farm.
Julio - By leaking information to the Hosts through Lisa, in exchange for sex, he inadvertently drives a lot of the Host drama that ensues. Overweight man knocking into Mae at the airport - Not a key element of the story but he's one of the only non-named people mentioned in the story who interacts with a named character.
Mae's fiance, Ethan - I admittedly do not recall much about this guy.
I somehow completely missed this about Julio! I need to go back and listen again.
Page 184 here and yeah, Billy's family is weirdly poorly drawn. I might have thought they were looking down on Jane for being a Filipina, but then we find out that the new girlfriend (who also hates Jane apparently) is Puerto Rican? It's never clear to me what Jane even saw in Billy. A means of escaping from her mother, I guess, except the main issue Jane seems to have with her mother is her fantastically poor judgment when it comes to men.
Regan's weird relationship with money is also demonstrated in the scene where she straight up tries to give Jane her bonus, oblivious to the fact that Jane's own bonus is way bigger than hers. It's not really clear why she even wants money, although to be fair, Regan's general obliviousness is an important part of her character. It's entirely plausible that she didn't even think it through.
I see a lot of people saying the characters seemed happy at the end. I agree, but - for some reason I felt like there was something bubbling under the surface for Jane. I read it to mean that she’d inevitably make another “bad” decision (I say “bad” because I kind of understood some of those massive decisions and can’t say I wouldn’t do the same) that would blow everything up. I also think Mae is working on borrowed time and eventually things will fall apart with Leon/the farm.
Is this a bad reading? I don’t think there was one thing that made me think this, more the culmination of the whole story.
No, I don't think that's a bad reading. I think everyone who said the characters seemed "happy" are also saying that happiness is an unsettled happiness. That leaves the reader ill-at-ease, that this is a temporary lull and there is more to come
I felt a lack of ease at the end of the story; the ending felt real, but unjust....which is concordant with the realities of Jane and Mae...
I love this way of articulating it. It's not the ending I want, but it's the one that fits with the world...the unjust world
Right? Like it can't last forever ...
I’m struck by the disparity in outcomes for breaking the rules. Jane is repeatedly described as conscientious and a “rule follower.” When she strays, the outcomes are disastrous for her. When Reagan breaks the rules, she is both protected by her privilege and rewarded outrageously. No human can follow all of the rules and despite being a “rule follower,” Jane breaks them. This reality underlies the precariousness of Jane’s new position with Mae. The brief scene of her using her cell phone while caring for Victor is such a foreboding flick to this.
I did not like the ending for Jane. It may have been the best outcome for her in this ficton, but I had wanted better for her and I wanted her out of the surrogate racket. Eh, well, it was written so she seemed content, but working for Mae? Yeesh.
Right? The above commenter said it made her feel unsettled and I completely agree. I think it helps that the author has said she didn't want to leave the reader with answers only questions. And I really have to question why I hate this outcome for her.
For me, I think it's because it seems like Jane has given up her personal autonomy and a big hunk of control of her life to Mae, which makes me want to shriek, "Run away!" But Jane has chosen what feels like safety for herself and her child, and it's hard to argue with that, even if I don't like how it feels.
The subtitle of the book could be "the sketchy things we do for our kids"
But consider who Jane is and her background. In this “great nation” of ours she does not have autonomy. She has very limited choices. She is a victim with little agency. I thought this book did a terrific job of portraying immigrants with their circumstantial lack of opportunity. We cannot judge Jane through our middle class eyes. What we have in common with Jane (and Ate) is our fierce devotion to our children.
I felt like this too. Also, everybody is so focused on Amalia's development. Is it too late for Jane to get educated and have a career that doesn't involve selling her body? I also didn't think she would really want to carry a baby for Mae. And it seems too intimate to also have her be the daycare provider.
Is Jane shifting into a kind of indentured servitude? She certainly isn't (literally) forced to stay with Mae; Ramos includes the tidbit that Jane is making a backup plan should Mae let her go. But it really seems like there is no request Mae could make that Jane would say no to. What does she owe Mae? Did Jane take Ate's advice about appeasing rich employers to close to heart?
Especially considering how involved Mae wants to be in Amalia's life.
Right! But like involved for now while she is an easily controllable child......Is Mae the Pygmalion?
Mae is the most likely to work for change in people - in the women she hires as hosts. Creating an idealized experience for babies that treats women as vessels. I think Ate does this too somewhat, in how she molds Jane and other women to be the ideal servants.
Ding, ding, ding! Yes, she HAS to be.
yes, Mae's preoccupation with control and Ate's too mean they're so often trying to control the people around them, to make money!
There are brief mentions about genuine affection, but they're almost throwaways compared to the financial benefits.
I wasn't a fan of the ending, either. I also wanted something better for Jane. .
It occurred to me that there is an underlying assumption that pregnancy is just a simple thing. You get pregnant, you grow a baby, you give birth. So, when people say just give the baby up for adoption, they don’t realize that you still have to go through pregnancy and you might have complications. You might die. You might end up with a mental health issue. You might end up with ripped up lady parts. In this book, it’s like they just assume these young healthy women can easily carry a pregnancy, give birth and be on their way. And how lucky they are to be able to make money for something so simple. Golden Oaks focuses on the good parts about a new baby, but doesn’t understand the gravity of all of the issues that come up with having a baby. If you give a baby up for adoption, you cannot guarantee the family that adopts them will be good. It makes me think of anti-abortion activists who say "give the baby up for adoption." What if you lose your job because you are pregnant and you have other children at home and your husband leaves you and you have extreme morning sickness for 9 months and no paid leave to recover? I had relatively easy pregnancies and I enjoyed being pregnant after the first three months of nausea. That said, it wasn't easy to juggle part-time grad school and a full-time job with my first baby and then juggle being a working mom with other children with my second and third babies. I got postpartum depression after my second baby. Thank goodness I didn't have to go back to work until my baby was 4 months old. Thank goodness I had support and resources. It just isn't as simple as this book makes it out to be. Again, I sound critical but I loved the book.
This is one of the reasons it angers me when people propose adoption as an alternative to abortion. Adoption is an alternative to *parenting*. It doesn’t make you unpregnant.
Another thing was the author never addressed the number of embryos that one huge client had implanted. That seemed unethical. Unless I got that wrong. I don't have the book anymore.
Yeah I feel like there was a big lead up to the mysterious client and then … we don’t really find out much? I felt that way about the whole ending- there were so many interesting things left hanging (what happened to Troy’s video? Why didn’t Regan give her bonus to Jane after Jane’s got pulled? Was it really the million dollar bonus? Did Regan ever confront Callie? Was Mae’s big project really just opening another farm?) I was really disappointed with the ending- it just tied up Jane and Mae’s stories in a big, unsatisfying bow.
Great catch, I totally forgot about Regan's intent to give Jane her bonus.
Also would've loved to see the dramatic fallout of confronting the Callie situation.
I found this book complex and fascinating in its portrayal of women who have so internalized the patriarchy/power/abuse of men that the men no longer need to be immediately present to be oppressive. The work of the male characters (from Leon to Billy to Ethan to Regan's dad to Troy, and even Julio) to keep their centrality and power is largely done by the women themselves, who contort their lives and bodies and behaviors to the expectations of the male gaze. Also, this is not a judgement-I do the same, and try desperately to untangle myself from enforcing patriarchy on my own body and life, but it's hard to survive (especially as a single mom) without doing so.
Mixed feelings about the book as a whole. I liked the idea of exploring the theme of "for women to succeed, they need to outsource motherhood" (first by hiring baby nannies but then by outsourcing even the pregnancy with the use of surrogates), and that becomes rich women 'liberating' themselves at the cost of poorer women. But I'd have liked to have at least one character say or acknowledging that maybe the fathers of these children could also be expected to help with childcare.
I also wasn't a fan of the late redemption of Ate, it felt a bit like a bit too much like forced emotional manipulation.
I feel like Ate’s “redemption”fell flat for me. The book talks about the multiple properties she bought - and how at least some of her children were not working themselves, while she worked herself to an early grave. It’s like she fell into the trap of “never enough” money. How much better off would her children have been to have HER - not just money? She fully expected Jane to do the same thing and leave her newborn for 9 months.
I thought the end was brutal, true, and perfectly done.
Brutal? How so?
Because after so much lying and manipulation and misunderstanding and terror, the outcome was Jane living with and working for Mae -- still at an arm's length and within a strong power dynamic. Maybe brutal isn't quite the right word, but I thought the author really made you confront all those emotions and sit with them uncomfortably in a perfect way.
Oh that I feel. Yeah, the end left me very unsettled. It was this pastoral, weird, uncomfortable peace, that I didn't love, but the characters seemed happy....and it made me feel queasy in a way.
I completely agree with KKS. Brutal. Jane is so, so strong at the end - such a good, strong mother. But still caged.
Who will Amalia become? I think Mae is going to have no guilt buying her love. How will Jane compete?
Why is Mae so interested in Jane, and in Amalia? It almost seemed like Mae admired Jane in a kindred-spirit-way (strong woman doing things her way in a man’s world? I don’t know...). And Mae seemed downright obsessed with Mali: why? As a strong girl who was going to go her own way? There was some weird needy dynamic going on there that I can’t figure out.
I also agree that brutal is the right word. Towards the end I found myself wanting to punch Mae or scream at Jane to stand up for herself. Her compliance makes her a doormat that the manipulative Mae gets to stomp all over. It was terribly uncomfortable to read.
But I also appreciate Ramos bringing out those feelings. It's the parts in books that bring our real emotional reaction that make me like them so much.
Questions:
Would it have been possible for the surrogacy center to be more transparent? If so, maybe Jane wouldn't have had to "run away" to check on her child? Shouldn't that have been something the center took care of?
How would I like to see the ending of the book change?
Is this book ripe for a sequel? What about movie or TV script?
How could the surrogacy centers branch out? Harvesting (legally?) organs? What other "parts" might poor folks be able to sell for survival? Is there a way for any of this to be ethical?
I am really interested in the extent to which the book - by which I mean Mae's account - is reliable. Jane in particular got told a lot of things, like that the tick had Lyme disease. I was deeply distrustful of almost everything Mae told Jane or any of the other hosts, but it was never revealed whether that was the right take or not. Like the repeatedly-canceled visits with Amalia... was it actually the client who insisted on canceling it? I don't think so. But the tick was less clear.
Finished the book on Saturday and it's been on my mind a lot. Shades of "Orphan Black", The Handmaid's Tale (book), and The Stepford Wives (book). It seems to me that in all of these stories, men are the strategists and women are the tacticians.
Ramos stuck the landing: Mae gets what she wants, Jane gets a home for her & Amalia. Regan is free of her dad. Ate is free of her burdens. It's a chilling ending in many ways because the reader can assume The Farm will only expand its reach, and yet the ending strikes me as completely logical, too.
Just finished the book and agree with so much that's already been written here. Am still digesting the ending. I must say I'm so relieved that Amalia proved to be strong, independent, healthy in the end. I was worried the book was building toward some tragedy befalling her, which would have just reinforced the trope that terrible things happen to children when their mothers work. (Like in movies when someone dies while the unmarried characters are (gasp!) having sex.) Ramos is clearly smarter than that.
I read this book before but did audiobook this time. It was very good. I can't decide if the "happy" ending is an actual attempt to be like "no but it's fine! It's so fine!" OR if it's an attempt to be extra creepy...the ending trying to be happy makes it seem like everyone is just fine with this whole thing which is the creepiest part of all?
Throughout the book (maybe it was just the title) I kept waiting for something (supernatural? psychologically twisty?) to happen. I think this is maybe because I recently finished Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang and kept seeing parallels to The Farm. As much as I did not like the ending, I don't know that there was any other outcome for Jane.
Yeah same. I thought there would be a big reveal with the big donor or Mae’s secret project.
Don’t forget Leon - Mae’s boss. She is always trying to please him. And also manipulate him the way she manipulates the women.
I have finished it. KUDOs to Ramos for writing such a great first time novel! My take-away is going to be about classism and its tie to racism in this country. Ramos has given us a good picture of the extremely wealthy and the very poor; the immigrants who sacrifice time with their own children in order to make a living caring for Americans with great means in order to give their own families a better future. And, I, a middle class person, can read about it all. I have very often thought about the quizzes that Ruby Payne includes in her book A Framework for Understanding Poverty-- could you survive in poverty, could you survive in the middle class, could you survive in wealth. That’s when I realized I am definitely in the middle and don’t understand how either of the other two categories work. Ramos’s book gives us a another look at how those two worlds operate.
Just to add, I just looked up reviews of Ruby Payne’s book and some organizations really trash it. But, her quizzes really gave me something to think about.