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Janeeny (200 KP) rated The Familiars in Books

Jul 8, 2020  
The Familiars
The Familiars
Stacey Halls | 2019 | Fiction & Poetry, History & Politics, Thriller
8
8.5 (8 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Familiars is a story about an unlikely friendship. Fleetwood Shuttleworth is from a noble family, she is pregnant with her fourth child and scared. As, to the dissapointment of her husband, she has never carried a baby to term. Alice Grey, is a midwife from a poor background with an impressive knowledge of herbs. A chance encounter in the middle of a wood throws the two women together and intertwines their fate.

Fleetwoods pregnancy progresses further than she’s ever carried before, with the help of Alice. However, in the world of novels, things never quite run smoothly and soon Alice stands accused of witchcraft. As Fleetwood despairs for the fate of her friend she soon finds herself in a desperate situation and the only way for both women to survive is to uncover a few dark secrets.

This was such an easy read, the story flowed so smoothly and the characters were very engaging. I particularly liked how the character of Fleetwoods husband, Richard, was written. As throughout the whole book you’re finding yourself changing your mind as to the type of person he is, and I still don’t really know if he is what I would class as a ‘good’ person.
  
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Jennifer Fox recommended Roma (2018) in Movies (curated)

 
Roma (2018)
Roma (2018)
2018 | Drama

"What I love about “Roma” that is that the director created a story where you can see the force of society in the background of the narrative in such a way that feels so truthful to the way we live history as human beings – in fact we don’t notice history even as it is creating us. As the maid lives her ordinary life, caring for her upper-class family, the world is swirling around her, yet she must continue to do her job even while the very fabric of the society she lives in is being torn apart, ransacked and recreated. This film is about so much and of course it is about class and the complexities of class, but yet despite class, in this story the “sisterhood” of women triumphs over station in such an ordinary and surprising way. It is this aspect that was glorious. The father disappears to follow his wandering desires and the mother, grandmother and the maid and cook are left to fend for themselves and the children. Yet even as the mother rages against the loss of her husband and takes it out on the maid, she completely accepts her maid’s accidental pregnancy and includes her in the family tribe without a second thought"

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ClareR (6037 KP) rated The Farm in Books

Sep 1, 2019  
The Farm
The Farm
Joanne Ramos | 2019 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
8
7.7 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
In a world where everything can be bought and sold, even pregnancy has a value in The Farm by Joanne Ramos. Make no mistake: this isn’t dystopian fiction. In fact it’s probably closer to what is actually happening than we could imagine.

Jane (a Filipino immigrant to the USA) has been persuaded by her aunt, that the easiest way to provide for her infant daughter is to become a surrogate for someone else’s baby. Mae runs Golden Oaks (nicknamed The Farm by Lisa, another of the surrogates), a luxury resort set in woodland, far from prying residents of Golden Oaks are all young women. And they’re all pregnant with the babies of wealthy parents. It came as no surprise to me that the vast majority of these women were immigrants from The Philippines or Eastern Europe. Mae has just started to look at a more ‘luxury’ host: women who have very good educations. The future parents are willing to pay a premium rate for women like Reagan. Not that it could make any difference, because all of the surrogates are merely incubators (referred to by their numbers, not their names, when staff are talking about them out of earshot), and carry embryos made from their parents sperm and eggs. These are mainly people who don’t want to waste their time with pregnancy, childbirth and recovery. This part really didn’t sit well with me: pregnant women reduced to numbers, and parents who didn’t have time to be pregnant (how could they have time to be parents? Would their babies be like a new designer handbag?). The other thing, was that they largely speaking didn’t have time to even visit the women who were carrying their children. At one point in the book, an ultrasound technician doesn’t even acknowledge the pregnant woman that she’s seeing (or isn’t!), angles the screen away from her as she shows the picture of the baby to its parent who isn’t even in the room. The pregnant woman is a non-person - merely a walking incubator.

Make no mistake, this is a pretty damning insight in to class and race. I felt so sorry for Jane. She is cut off from her daughter. None of the women have regular contact with friends or family on the outside. And seeing foetuses and babies being used as commodities and benchmarks of profit really made me uncomfortable.

I did really enjoy this though. I liked the women who were the main characters - they all had valid reasons for their choices. And I liked that this wasn’t written as an alternative dystopian novel à la Handmaids Tale. It’s all so frighteningly plausible.