Jessamine ChanReseñas

Frida has a lousy day and leaves her toddler alone at home for a couple of hours. She pays the price through court intervention, surveillance, and ultimately a government education program to learn how to be a good mother. Will she pass and gain custody of her child back?

When AI-enhanced dolls are pulled in for use in the education program, it's a little bit of The Handmaid's Tale and a little bit of Klara and the Sun.

The book had moments of brilliant insight about the cult of mommyhood, but the majority of the time it felt like a slog, like I was in the program with Frida. I never felt sympathetic towards Frida and the other moms in the program. My preference is for dystopian novels with a bit of hope.

3.5 stars Sooo many emotions with this one. Interesting premise, good writing but could have been shorter. I felt that it dragged on a bit and became a bit repetitive. I also found some of it unrealistic but then some of it seemed almost too realistic. I felt this book definitely made you think about what is a “good mother” and the pressure that society puts on mothers (not fathers). This is even more so the case in the social media age. Some of the lessons at the school were just so out there and messed up. Yes, let’s teach how to comfort a child by physically harming them first. Let’s teach them to be better mothers by taking them away from their children for a year with little too no contact. While it seemed way out there, I am sure there are those out there who judge without any personal knowledge themselves. Definitely one to think about.

Reading this was an excruciating experience. I completely hated it.

First, what happens to Frida is close to my worst nightmare. So I think Chan succeeds if this book is meant to horrify. It felt like that episode of Black Mirror where the guy thinks he’s testing a VR game but they’re really just torturing him. So this book succeeds in the horror genre, which is a genre I usually avoid.

But as social commentary, this book felt frustratingly absurd. The circumstances of the book are not a logical extension of current policy taken too far. The circumstances are beyond belief. A few specific gripes:

1. No one understands the first thing about child development in this book. For example, one-year-olds do not play on command. But Frida is judged because she can’t make her 18-month-old play with toys within a certain window of time. Ridiculous. Is it explained anywhere why the social worker doesn’t know how typical toddlers behave? No. We’re supposed to accept that Frida has to live up to impossible standards. The message of the book that mothers face impossible standards is received, but it’s made less effective when the standards are absurd.

2. The parenting “lessons” in the school for bad mothers are just torture. Ok, but why?! There is no world-building to explain why the government is motivated to spend a lot of money surveilling and torturing bad parents. How do the powers that be in this book benefit from gaslighting bad mothers for an entire year?! Again, this book would have been more effective as social commentary if the parenting lessons had roots in actual parenting skills. Or Chan could have built a future world with context so we the readers see what motivated the torture camp.

3. My final gripe necessitates a spoiler. Losing custody of your child is one thing. Having a restraining order keeping you from your child until they are an adult is insane. The justification for this isn’t given. So Chan again gives us a world that wants to torture bad mothers without giving context to show the reader how we got there. The added detail of punishing the maternal grandparents is also exasperating. Why?! Just to maximize the horror?

This book succeeds at scaring the reader, but does it show us how current problematic beliefs could morph into horrifying policies? Not really. It just jumps straight to the horror.

Now that I’ve aired my grievances...

Psychologically, witnessing Frida’s unraveling is effectively done. This book succeeds as a character study of a mother with depression who is unsupported and then ruthlessly punished for falling apart. I kept thinking that what Frida needed from the beginning was mom friends, a community. (I couldn’t believe every single mom she met at the playground judged her, as if self-aware imperfect parents don’t exist in the future?) Frida couldn’t find a parenting community and so she imploded from loneliness and stress. Ironically she finds that community at the torture camp when it’s too late.

Update: I just watched/read [b:Fleishman Is in Trouble|41880602|Fleishman Is in Trouble|Taffy Brodesser-Akner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556374309l/41880602._SY75_.jpg|70634699] and think these are weirdly similar books.

In some ways, this book reminds me of [b:Never Let Me Go|6334|Never Let Me Go|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1353048590l/6334._SY75_.jpg|1499998] by Kazuo Ishiguro in that it's a near-future sci-fi that's stealthy about the fantastic elements in order to focus on failings in our current systems. I picked this up months after becoming a mother with some friends saying, "hmmm idk about reading that right now" but honestly? It makes the satire THAT much more biting as I'm inundated with Reels on how to be a good parent/you're doing just fine as a parent/but hey maybe here's something your baby should be doing now and if not consider whether you're a Bad Mother? Or the inciting incident, where Frida has a Very Bad Day and stays a little too long at the office- wanting a moment to yourself is so incredibly relatable.

It has additional resonance for me as an American Born Chinese mother of a biracial child. When we see glimpses of Frida's ex and his new partner raising Harriet while Frida's parents aren't kept as in the loop, I'm reminded of the blindspots transracial parents can have with children of color.


At about the 75% mark, I realized there's no way for there to be a truly happy ending here without it being a substantially different story, and the ending here is bittersweet. It's immensely frustrating because you root for Frida the whole time, and she's trying her best! But because she doesn't conform to the idealized version of motherhood, she's deemed Bad.

I did wonder if [plot speculation] the dolls were going to uprise at some point, or if Frida was going to have to choose between Emanuelle and Harriet (which she sort of did, with the videos and the phone access). There's still something very weird with the dolls and I can't help but wonder if the school was also training the doll AI to learn, but we didn't get into that much because it wasn't the focal point.

I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I'll be picking this one up for a reread unless it comes up for book club.

I had difficulty reading this book at first, and could only read 10 or so pages at a time before needing to take a break. The second half was much better than the first, until the ending which just didn’t seem to fit the characters.

a great premise about a mother who had left her two-year old alone for two hours and is arrested and sent to mother training camp. Unfortunately, when the camp used robotic dolls to retrain the mothers- I found the book to be repetitive and dull.

I really did not like this book. It was a very upsetting viewpoint of motherhood that wasn't thought provoking at all -- it was more just upsetting. I also thought it went on way too long (there weren't any twists and turns, it just documents a year in the life of a dystopian society). I gave it two stars because the writing wasn't bad.

As I finish this book, I honestly feel like I’m about to hurl. The beginning of the book I enjoyed and at first the dystopian school for what CPS considers bad mothers was one of amusement.
However, it became so repetitive and the continuous negativity took its toll on me. The government puts women who aren’t even actual mothers to determine how a perfect mother acts and behaves. They are given no exceptions and your motherhood will be taken away from anyone who isn’t “perfect”.

As a mother of two very unique children, parenting them as a single mom is hard and I’m sure most people would agree to this. Having two children, I can’t have a one size fits all parenting style, in fact my parenting for each child is completely different.

We have so much judgment in this society and don’t tell me you haven’t ever been annoyed by a screaming child in a restaurant or while shopping and think why is that Mom not doing anything?? Nobody is perfect and all Moms make mistakes and should be able to parent their own way when they have the best intentions for their child.

There was real opportunity for this to be so much more, if only it brought more emotions and a build on relationships. I was secretly wishing the stepmom would have been sent to the school also lol.

interesting concept. I just didn't like the way the story went. Come on.. sorry

Well this was devastatingly brilliant. It started off with me thinking "I thought this was science-fiction?" and then things... escalated quickly. The robot children were of course a science-fictional device, but everything else was all too plausible (and far from unprecedented; not even as far off current punitive social welfare policies as it should be). No holds barred in its depiction of the different expectations placed on "good fathers" and "good mothers" either.

The story ends on what, to be realistic, is probably only a temporarily happy reunion between mother and daughter. I choose not to be realistic on this point. It only requires a few people to conspire against their own self-interest, followed by a decade-long string of good luck: it's well-deserved, so I choose to believe it could happen.

I feel like this book had so much potential, but it constantly fell short. About halfway through, it finally had my attention, but the story just dragged on. It was incredibly hard to pay attention.

Very unsettling. 3.5 stars

This book is BRUTAL. I understand the theme of the pressures on mothers - things falling unfairly on women, the struggle of women in the workplace, society's expectations for mothers. And, yes, the main character made a big mistake in her mothering. She was a somewhat complex character. So what landed so poorly for me?

"The School" is just this giant presence - NO individual characters (the teachers, leaders, social workers) were developed to help the reader understand their motives. The "bad guys" are pure evil - sadistic - with no nuance whatsoever. When the concept of the dolls was brought in, it just felt all wrong. The examination of their life-like body parts felt almost like pornography, and child pornography at that. The entire experience of reading this book was torturous. I kept looking for some thread of hope or anything like it. A story can deliver a tough message and still be a good story, but this did not deliver.

Different genre from my typical reads. Picked up on a whim but listened to the whole thing... As a mom, I found it thought provoking, humorous, crass, eerie and a sarcastic critique of modern motherhood. Appreciated the dynamics of race, age, class and social location in the characters. Good narration for audiobook!

DNF at 50%

Thank you to NetGally for providing an advanced review copy. Dystopian world that doesn't seem to far from reality. In the current climate of school board meeting insanity and SO much discussion of "good parenting", this book hits a nerve. You follow a later 30 something mom, Frida, that has "one very bad day" that haunts her for the entire story and sets in motion a series of repercusions one could only dread as a parent. CPS arrives, her child is sent to her father and Frida is drug through an inept and pre-deteremined outcome of a court. Given the choice of being listed for life as a bad parent and custody stripped from her or attending a reformatory school for bad parents, she chooses the later. She is promised that in one year's time she can return to her daugher, Harriet, who is just shy of 2 currently. However, she has to live and learn in this new reforming program which becomes a hellish nightmare of mental games - all with good intentions of makng her a better mother. The skepticism of government knowing best and what consistutes good parenting and the stereotypes of mom's role vs dad's role plays out perferctly in this novel. You will find yourself agreeing and then disagreeing. As a parent of two teens, I completely related to these pressures that are in our society and within the stereotypes. I highly recommend this book. It will definitely make you think.

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.

Jessamine Chan's debut novel will certainly be scooped up for a new cable series. It has all the elements of speculative fiction, a world only slightly different than what we recognize but run by a government run amuck with the idea of proper mothering. The heroine, Frida, is guilty of having a very bad day. Existing after days of no sleep, trying to care for her sick daughter, she makes a terrible error in judgment to leave her alone and go get a coffee. Then she stops at her work and quickly answers some email and yes two hours go by and her child was now taken by police and she is arrested for endangerment. Chan then describes how the new child protection services addresses her mistake. First cameras are placed in her apartment, her phone and computer are monitored and after a probation period a judge decides she has to attend a new school to learn how to be a good mother. Her child will stay with its father who by the way left Frida for a new, young Pilates instructor when she was eight months pregnant. The bulk of the novel depicts the life in the school which has a set curriculum, lifelike artificial dolls which act as their children while taking data, and the dynamics of personalities of life in what amounts to a woman's prison. Part Handmaid's Tale and part Klara of the Sun, Chan creates a realistic Kafka-like novel that builds to a satisfying if frustrating conclusion. The Washington post review aptly includes a link to a recent story about Child Protective Services in poor communities. It's remarkable to read that as a companion piece before dismissing this work as unrealistic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/nyregion/foster-care-nyc-jane-crow.html

Chan's writing is clever and the descriptions of the various characters are well observed. Would recommend.

Lines
The woman is young and striking, maybe in her midtwenties, has evidently come straight from the gym. She wears a spandex jacket over a tank top. A gold cross hangs low above her cleavage. Her arm muscles are visible through her clothes. Her dyed-blond hair is slicked into a ponytail that makes her wide-set eyes look reptilian. She has beautiful skin, but she’s wearing a tremendous amount of foundation, her face made up with contours and highlights. When she smiles, Frida sees her gleaming white movie-star teeth.

Frida came to understand that Susanna was the barnacle and Gust was the tall ship,

The playground mothers frightened her. She couldn’t match their fervor or skill, hadn’t done enough research, stopped breastfeeding after five months when these women were still cheerfully nursing three-year-olds.She thought that becoming a mother would mean joining a community, but the mothers she’s met are as petty as newly minted sorority sisters, a self-appointed task force hewing to a maternal hard line.

Will is thirty-eight and single, an avid online dater in a city without many bachelors his age. Women adore his gentle demeanor; his tightly curled black hair, now flecked with gray; his thick beard; the pelt of chest hair that he jokingly claims is evidence of his virility. He wears his hair tall at the crown, and with his tiny wire glasses and long nose and deep-set eyes, he resembles a Viennese scientist from the turn of the twentieth century.

She’s wearing her best approximation of this costume: a gray silk shell, a jewel-neck lavender cardigan, a knee-length black skirt, kitten heels. Her bangs are freshly trimmed, her makeup subdued, her hair pulled back in a low ponytail. She looks demure and inoffensive and middle-aged, like a kindergarten teacher or a stay-at-home mom who finds blow jobs a necessary evil.

The mothers had to sign nondisclosure agreements. They’re not allowed to talk about the school after they leave, can’t say anything about the program during the weekly calls. If they do, regardless of the outcome of their cases, their names will be added to a Negligent Parent Registry. Their negligence will be revealed when they try to rent or buy a home, register their child for school, apply for credit cards or loans, apply for jobs or government benefits—the moment they do anything that requires their social security number.

Audio book is excellent production. A fascinating dark future for mothers being treated different than fathers, is visited. Haunting ending.

Audio book is excellent production. A fascinating dark future for mothers being treated different than fathers, is visited. Haunting ending.

After leaving her daughter Harriet home alone, Frida is astonished at the response by social workers and the police. Harriet is taken from her, and Frida is put under surveillance. When the surveillance report comes back negative, Frida is given one last chance to regain custody - to attend a year long program designed to turn her into a good mother.

I had a hard time getting into this book. I did not particularly like Frida and found her pretty unsympathetic. It took a long time for the book to get interesting, and even then it was slow reading. I understand the author was trying to make a point about a surveillance society, and the intrusion of government, but I wish she had just told a story. Overall, 2 out of 5 stars.

I kept hoping this novel would improve, but the story only became worse. This had to be one of the worst books I have read in a very long time. The premise is absurd, and the writing is abysmal. Do not waste your time.

"Fix the home and fix society."

"I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good."

I was really fascinated by the concept of The School for Good Mothers. The start is a bit slow going, but once Freda arrives at the school, it picks up a bit. There were parts of this book that I found fascinating, for example, the school itself, the lessons, and the tests. I still have mixed feelings about the robot kids. On the one hand I think this was an interesting element to add in. On the other hand I had trouble being able to really visualise them. I would love to see them in a film. There were elements of the story that were lacking. In particular, I was really disappointed by the ending. A far better ending that would have better fit with the premise of the story would have been if Harriet had died while in the care of Susanna and Gust or if Susanna and Gust had also been sent to the school after the low carb incident. Especially as there were people in the school for lesser transgressions. I do think this story could be turned into a really interesting film.

Note: This book actually only took me a couple of days to read once I properly got started. The long date range is because I had an appendectomy in the middle.

When a mother loses custody of her daughter due to a lack of judgment that did not cause harm, she is sent to the school for a year's sentence. Without giving a spoiler, I will say what follows is the sci-fi part in her "rehab." While it began good, with time into her year of rehabilitation, to me it became less interesting and more ridiculous. Unless you like a sci-fi genre, I wouldn't recommend it. I don't and didn't know it was like this.

I heard Jessamine Chan speak at the Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago. The School For Good Mothers had been on several debut novel lists that one should read. This book however did not resonate with me. The ending was the best part as something different happened. I found that Frida’s (the bad mother) bad day was actually horrible and what took place at the school was extremely repetitive. Maybe if my children were still young, I could relate more.