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The School for Good Mothers
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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. Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.
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.
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.
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Oh man. I think I might be a minority on this one, but I just couldn’t get over some of my irritations with this book.
The School for Good Mothers is a dystopian story about a woman who had a “very bad day.” The premise of the book was intriguing, but it’s execution felt dry and lackluster. We get a lot of Frida’s POV, but there is no world building about how the program came to be, what happened within the government to make such a program part of the “normal” society standards, etc. The writing style was good, but the narrative voice was monotone and disconnected which did a lot of telling but very little showing. It got tiresome reading “Linda said…. Meryl said… Frida said…” in almost every paragraph, and the contradicting sentences were just as frustrating. An example being on page 185 where it reads, “Rumor has it that……..” immediately followed with, “Frida saw a…….” Now, if Frida SAW something…. then how is it a RUMOR?
I understand that the book is meant to depict an emotionless yet morally contradicting society, but the book lacked any sort of feeling at all. Because we are told what happens with very little descriptive elements, we are not able to emotionally connect to the characters or their situations through the story itself. I failed to connect to any of it. The ending did help redeem the book’s purpose a little bit, but it came a little too late for my liking.
What this book did do for me was spark a lot of thought provoking questions. On the surface, it feels like a story that could potentially happen. After all, parents (especially new ones) are given a lot of advice on how they should raise their children, what they should do more of, less of, etc. Everyone seems to have an opinion which often feels more like an act of judgement than one of support. But what if those opinions were the collectively supported as a society norm? A one-shoe-fits-all kind of approach. Do they take in account cultural difference? Natural bonding of mother and child? What about the fathers? Should their expectations of parenting change simply because of their gender?
While I did enjoy digesting the multiple scenarios this book will spark in discussion groups, it’s overall presentation prevented me from really liking the book for what it is.
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