Plutocracy, Not Theocracy Compels The Handmaids Of 'The Farm'
Joanne Ramos builds her own experience into this story of a young Filipino woman who ends up on a seemingly cushy "gestational retreat" where women — called "hosts" — carry babies for rich families.
The Farm might serve only as an echo-chamber treatment of The Handmaid's Tale, were it not for author Joanne Ramos's deft way of creating characters. She peoples her book with figures who are appealingly engaging — or, at times, engagingly repellent.
Debut novelists tend to honor the precept "write what you know," and Ramos grounds the work solidly in her own experiences; the dizzying world of Manhattan investment
