MixedLos Angeles Review of BooksThe Farm doesn’t always make it easy to classify who exactly is the oppressed and who is oppressor, and this is one of the book’s strengths ... by the end of the novel it seemed to me that Ramos hadn’t quite picked a side, ideologically. At times, The Farm reads like an explicit critique of capitalism; at other times, it’s more like an apologia. Some elements of the plot seem transparently designed to increase tension or introduce an argument that Ramos wants to sink her teeth into ... Which life takes precedence: the Host’s, or the baby’s? Can the client block the Host from undergoing chemotherapy if it would harm the fetus? This is good stuff, and Ramos plumbs both sides of the questions with sympathy and insight. Yet, it is all resolved too quickly ... one gets the impression that Ramos hadn’t quite figured out her own thinking on the matter ... Even so, her ability to explore the nuances of these questions in the first place—in tight, spare prose, with well-placed plotting, no less—makes me hopeful that Ramos will pen another book soon.
