The School of Good Mothers by Jessamine Chen

Title: The School for Good Mothers

Author: Jessmine Chan

Publisher: Simon & Schuster 2022

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 336

Rating: 1/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

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.

I absolutely detested this book. We are reading it for book club and I know I am going to rant at the meeting. Overall I had a few big issues with the book:

1. Who is this book for? I know how much society pressures mothers and then blames them for anything negative that affects children. Fathers are largely absent from this scenario. The book detailed all of that, but was it new information? No. I know exactly how all this works.

2. No character growth. I was hoping that Frida and many of the other characters would experience some great character growth. Unfortunately we don’t really that growth. Additionally, Frida repeats herself so much. We hear her whine over and over again. The reputation really got to me.

3. Conflicted feelings about Frida’s socioeconomic status. Frida is struggling financially at the beginning, but she does have access to resources. Most of the women that she meets at the school do not have access to those resources. The cult between those women and Friday wasn’t really explored and glossed over so much.

4. The school itself is just ridiculous. I understand that speculative fiction likes to exaggerate circumstances to make a point, but the school and specifically the “children” were just too much to be believable. I just couldn’t.

5. I know we are supposed to be very annoyed by Frida’s ex-husband and I definitely was. But what was his purpose in the book. Every time he was mentioned or appeared, I just shouted “Fuck the Patriarchy.”

Overall, I slogged through this book and immediately felt like I wasted so many reading days. This felt like a very bad copy of The Handmaid’s Tale that just doesn’t live up to the hype. When I add in all the bullshit about restricting the rights of women, I was so incredibly mad at this book.

Next up on the TBR pile: