The School for Good Mothers

More 3.5? Chilling. At first I was hating on Frida, the main character, who has a 'very bad day' (a nod to Alexander) and leaves her 1-yr old daughter home alone for hours. Who does that? Although I was slightly sympathetic to her lack of sleep and single parenting - Jerk of a husband Gust left Frida when Harriet was three months old, for Susanna, a 20-something new-agey redhead. They share custody. So when Frida leaves to get a coffee and pick up a file for her work-at-home job, I could sort of stretch for some understanding - but hours? off premises? Frida gets busted, Harriet is put into Gust and Susanna's custody, and then the story takes its science-fiction turn. The laws about parental negligence and abuse have recently changed show more and gotten tougher. There is a new program Frida must complete in order to get back parental rights. She is taken to a former small college, repurposed for this experimental treatment - all the women 'participating' are basically treated like its prison - no personal objects, uniforms, work detail, but most warped of all - parenting classes that are essentially reprogramming. She has an atonement journal, she learns to repeat the school's mantra, "I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good" The pink lab-coated directors instruct the women in the most miniscule aspects of interacting with children - proper voice inflection, eye contact, 'motherese', and then they are given 'dolls' to practice with. These AI creations are developmentally age-appropriate, and cry, soil diapers (with blue goo that powers them), are warm to the touch and essentially become surrogate children. The tasks set up for them are nearly impossible, especially since the dolls can be programmed by the directors. However, they end up taking on more human qualities than not the more time they spend with the mothers. Frida names hers Emmanuelle and since they are together for a year, bonds with this fake child as if it were her own. All her energy is focused on succeeding in her 'studies' so she can return to Harriet, but it seems a set-up for failure, not to mention mega mind games. An example: "Ms. Russo thinks Frida's bedtime stories lack depth. 'You can't just have the cow jump over the moon, Frida. You need to have the cow consider his place in society. If you're telling the Red Riding Hood story, you need to talk about the kind of woods, the kind of food in the basket....how was Little Red Riding Hood feeling as she made that journey? You're teaching her about being a girl. Remember, everything she'll learn about girlhood will come from you." (163) Meanwhile Frida's phone time with Harriet gets canceled for months at a time, when she doesn't meet an arbitrary goal. The author does a good job of exposing the unfair (sometimes impossible) demands made on mothers through her outlandish examples. Additionally there is a Dad's school nearby, and when they are brought together for socialization, the men clearly do not have the same outrageous expectations or limitations placed on the mother. "Unit 2 covers the Fundamentals of Food and Medicine. Cooking, the mothers learn is one of the highest forms of love. The kitchen is the center, and the mother the heart of the home. Like any other aspect of mothering, craft and attention to detail are paramount." (168) Needless to say, I would fail miserably. Underneath the story, this is a commentary on what happens when the 'state' messes with motherhood, after the Handmaid's Tale has messed with fertility - though not quite as barbaric. "It's a shame, she [Frida] thinks, that no one has invented grafts or transplants. The school could have replaced the faulty parts of their characters with mother instincts, mother mind, mother heart." (311) Needless to say, by the end of the story, Frida has my complete sympathy, but it was sort of by default, for what she represented, rather than her as a person. Not sure if we are intended to keep Frida at arm's length throughout so she can merely be a cautionary tale, but I wanted her to be a little more real - and leave the pseudo-humanity to the dolls. PS: Hurrah for a Chicago writer! show less

Read a review that said this would be better in first person and I cannot help but agree. Frida did this, Frida did that. It all felt so detached. The emotion I felt throughout this was anger. I was actually livid the entire time. Part of this is the structure of this world, specifically the shaming, that was purposely built to make me angry. But I think part of that anger comes from a complacency on Frida’s part. We don’t actually see her resist much at all until the very end and this resistance is undeveloped. It affects everyone around her, specifically Will, who has broken so many rules at her expense. She even confesses her love before doing what she does. Despite this, I think the end is very, very emotionally impactful. It show more has the most emotion of the entire book. Still, it’s emotionality is undercut by details that are unnecessary. I think the most unrealistic aspect of this book is how the “bad mothers” ranged from objectively physically abusive mothers to people who ‘babied’ their child? The commentary, that mothers are supposed to be perfect, doesn’t work when we’re forced to believe that an abusive mother’s only flaw is that they aren’t perfect. There is a separation, and it has nothing to do with perfection. show less

Frida is a single parent to a toddler. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. She and her husband had planned a future together, but halfway through her pregnancy, he found someone younger and less pregnant to love instead and now Frida is struggling. She's taken a lower paying job that lets her work from home on the days she has custody of Harriet, but Harriet has an ear ache that kept her up all night and Frida needs some papers from her office to complete an overdue task. So she makes the mistake of leaving her child to run a quick errand. An errand that took a little longer than planned and when she gets home, it's to find the police there and child services taking her daughter away. Soon after, Frida is sentenced to a year in a show more reeducation program for bad mothers.

Frida is incarcerated with a diverse group of mothers whose transgressions swing between actual abuse to the allegations of an ex-husband. Each woman must been seen to learn her lesson and become a good mother, with the help of AI robots designed to look like appropriately-aged children. As the women work through the lessons of parenting -- an approach that says that every moment a mother must be vigilant and attentive. This is a version of the world just slightly different from our own and the differences seem all too plausible.

Frida isn't an entirely likable character and her mistake toes the line against what is acceptable, but she's also very human and a good conduit for showing this repressive world and what it might entail. Chan is a talented writer and the novel is well-plotted. I don't generally like dystopian fiction, but this book kept me turning the pages, invested in Frida's life. show less

In this insightful novel, Frida, a Chinese-American mother, suffers from a parenting lapse and loses custody of her beloved daughter. Her only hope of regaining custody is to complete a year-long, residential reeducation program. As might be expected, the program’s arbitrary standards and emphasis on surveillance reflect modern society’s contradictory ideas regarding motherhood and privacy. The twist is that the program’s inmates are supposed to demonstrate their parenting progress by mothering AI robots designed to look and behave like children.

I found this novel gripping, effective, and all too plausible. Highly recommended.

Frida Liu, recently-divorced mother of a toddler, is struggling to get by. Her ex-husband has a young, peppy girlfriend. Frida's career is going nowhere, and her finances are tight. But at least she has Harriet, her beloved daughter. Until her Very Bad Day. Sleep deprived, overheated, and not thinking straight, Frida leaves Harriet in her Exersaucer while she runs out to get an iced coffee. She'll be right back -- except, she remembers she needs a file from her office. She gets caught up answering emails, and before she knows it, more than two hours have gone by -- and a neighbor, hearing Harriet's cries, has reported Frida to Child Protective Services. Now, if Frida wants to regain joint custody of her daughter, she must attend a show more year-long government program to retrain negligent mothers. Separated completely from the outside world, the women in this program are given robotic dolls to care for. They face high demands and constant monitoring. But if they can pass, it will all be worth it -- right?

So, parts of this story worked for me, and parts did not. I found the nanny state pictured in this near-future America frighteningly believable, though the program that Frida and the other "bad mothers" are put in is, of course, over the top with the gaslighting and emotional (and sometimes physical) torture that they endure. It's clear that the program sets the mothers up for failure, and one wonders what the government gets out of this system? I was also bothered by the lack of attention to child development displayed by the social worker and other officials. The robotic dolls were a fascinating element; there's potential for more story there. I felt that the second half of the book dragged on. The ending was bittersweet, more bitter than sweet, really. If the premise interests you, give this a go -- but don't expect an uplifting read. show less

This novel is heartbreaking. A mom, at her wit's end, can't take another moment of her daughter being ill, crying, and in pain. Frida adores her daughter, Harriet, but in a moment of weakness she leaves her child alone for a few hours. Child Protective Services is called to evaluate Frida's fitness to be a mother. Frida is sent to a school to teach bad mothers how to be good mothers. The lengths at which these women are tested in frightening and demeaning. The standards they are held to are unreal and made me so angry. Frida tries so hard, but nothing seems to go right.
This book was very difficult to read. Of course, we want children to be in safe, loving homes. But this novel depicts protective services in such a way that I wonder how show more much is true, and how much the system works against parents who are trying their best.
Thanks to Simon and Schuster and Edelweiss for the ARC. All opinions are my own and freely given. show less

Okay, buckle in, folks. Apparently, I have a lot to say about this one.
I'm trying to think of ANY reason I wouldn't give this book 5 stars, and I...can't think of a single one. The School for Good Mothers is truly unique. The plot is compelling, the world-building is realistic, and the characters are human. Something about the storytelling here is so special and layered and well-composed without coming across as pseudo-intelligent and unnecessarily indulging to the audience.
First of all, the characters are so well constructed without being overly written. I feel such an intense pity for almost every character in this book, and that's not an easy thing to achieve in a work of fiction. Nothing about these characters or their stories made show more them particularly likable(or hatable for that matter), but they're certainly complex in all the right areas. Even our secondary and background characters felt appropriately developed.
More importantly, The layers and layers of social commentary in The School for Good Mothers left me reeling. I found myself pausing to process what I had just read every few pages.
Chan discusses the issues of being a second-generation adult in this country with ease. These issues are challenged with such a systematic and clinical hand that it's almost impossible to ignore the complexities that come with parenting a child of color. And with these complexities come even further challenges as Chan proposes that there genuinely are no cut-and-dry solutions when raising a child. This is a struggle with which I don't particularly identify, yet Chan opens a window into this world for outside viewers that is so clear and heavy that I don't know if I'll ever be able to close it.
Beyond the issues of culture faced by both our protagonist and many other characters comes the issue of gender. The governmental institution created in this novel is so incapable of properly creating well-adjusted parents, both fathers and mothers, that somehow we go beyond satire and circle right back around to reality. Now, I could go on and on about the unbearable expectations placed on a mother in our society, but I'll spare you my soapbox rant and just say: read. this. book.
(On a side-note, for some reason, I feel like is everything Klara and the Sun wanted to be. It turns out the concept of a robotic child surrogate isn't entirely unbelievable; it just needed to be reframed.)
So, needless to say, I'm an English major(I know, I know, Hanna shut up). I write about books for grades every single day, and(clearly) that mindset seeps its way into my personal life. It's kind of hard for me to read any book for fun without analyzing and underlining and annotating. All too often, I find that the stories I read for pleasure don't really offer any intellectual content. The School for Good Mothers absolutely scratched the itch in my silly little monkey brain that has been begging for an articulate yet fun story for a while now. 5/5, highly recommended to any and all readers. Disregarding all of the chaos mentioned above, this is genuinely a good casual read as well- and a story rarely achieves both levels simultaneously.
Thank you, Brian, for this recommendation; it turns out Writers & Lovers is going to have some competition for best book this year because this is going to be a tough one to beat. show less