The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

 

Summary (from the publisher): In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.

Until Frida has a very bad day.

The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground, who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgment, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.

Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.

A searing page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages. Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.

Review: Frida tries hard to be a good mother. Until she has a very bad day, after many days of little sleep. Little does Frida know, but the state is starting to crack down on parents who make mistakes of any kind. Because of one moment of poor judgement, Frida is sentenced to a year away at a reform school to learn how to be a better mother. Desperate to be reunited with her daughter Harriet, Frida desperately tries her best to meet all the requirements. 

This was a dark, bleak dystopian novel along the lines of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. In this novel, the state is interfering in a radical way with families, and mothers in particular. Mothers are being held to impossible standards of perfection. In this version of reality, the government that controls Frida's life dictates that it is better for a child to be without her mother than to be with one who makes even the most minor of mistakes. Meanwhile, Frida's ex-husband, while certainly not a bad father, does make some questionable choices yet no flags are ever raised to suggest he should face similar punishments. 

I listened to the audio version of this book. It was very well done and the story felt engaging and compelling. But because of the bleak content, it did put me in a dark headspace at times. Frida and the fellow mothers are in such deep despair that suicide is a very real threat. Throughout it all, Frida never gives up hope that if she just plays along, she will be forgiven and reunited with her daughter. There was something so heartbreaking about her desperate belief that good will prevail, all the while the book becomes darker and darker. Frida's desperate longing for her daughter, her review of every memory, every physical detail she can recall while they are separated, was gut wrenching. 

The school Frida is sent to is located on the campus of a closed liberal arts college. There was something striking about seeing Frida called into what was the former study abroad office to review her progress and learn if she will be allowed to call home to speak to her daughter. The juxtaposition of an office where young students used to meet to discuss trips and opportunities to learn and explore, contrasted with Frida, who has seen her world, and her opportunities drastically reduce to nearly the same level of restriction as prison, were disheartening.  

This book offers some interesting commentary on what it means to be a good mother, the lengths mothers will go to for their children, and the scrutiny that women face as they try to parent. Frida is Chinese American and feels that she has failed her parents as well as her daughter. Meanwhile, her daughter, in the absence of her mother and her mother's family, has been cut off from that piece of her heritage, in yet another element to the dark atrocity of the punishment enacted on Frida and her family. 

I did think this dragged at times. Of course, this serves to underscore the length of time Frida suffers. The AI dolls Frida and the other mothers were forced to parent during their training were creepy and otherworldly.  This was so relentlessly hopeless that it was a hard read, but it did give me much to think about regarding the risks of heightened government control and scrutiny on female behavior. 

Stars: 4