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The School For Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan:
Year published: 2021
Book # for author: 1
Genre: slightly dystopian
Setting: Philedelphia in the near future
The School For Good Mothers synopsis
I couldn’t resist the title The School For Good Mothers and dove right into this book by Jessamine Chan. I guessed it would cut right to the heart of things, no sugar coating or anything. I was right.
In The School For Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan we met Frida, a 40-ish year old woman who recently became a mom and also recently became a single mom. Her daughter Harriet was around 18 months when, one day out of the blue, Frida left her home alone for a few hours. The neighbors heard her crying and Frida is sent to the School For Good Mothers.
In this school, motherhood is broken down into a method. Each mother is given an AI doll that’s programmed with real feelings and abilities. The mothers need to parent this doll as they would their child. Then the skills, emotions, abilities and progress of both mother and doll are measured. At the end of the year judges decide if the mothers will be able to get their kids back. If they don’t, their child will grow up with someone else and the mothers will have zero contact.
Elements to the story
The first element was Frida, the main character. She was interesting, someone I wanted to read about. I wondered why she left her daughter at home, though. I was waiting for more indications of her complete overwhelm, clues of her being neglectful in other areas but there weren’t. Does it happen that an otherwise great mother just leaves her toddler at home alone for a few hours? I don’t know.
Then there were the other mothers. While they added a lot, they were harder to keep track of. I was mainly focused on Frida, but other readers might pay more attention to her school-mates. There were also many references to race, which I didn’t appreciate. Because the story was set sometime in the future it was unclear if the author was saying racism got worse, or if she thinks this is how it is now. Frida’s romantic relationships (and relationship with her ex as well) felt very true to life.
Another element to the story was reading about the school. Its ideas, the exercises they did, how they broke down motherhood. It would have been nice to hear more about what makes a good mother according to them: maybe get to read their comprehensive schedule. Everything they said seemed accurate, but exaggeratedly so. It was unclear what we were expected to agree with and what we weren’t. But this allowed the reader to think more.
Pacing
The pacing was all over the place, specifically the time Frida spent at the school. It felt like the story dropped in here and there, rushed ahead, stopped to fill us in on a few details, then skipped a bunch of time. Maybe it was on purpose to show how time felt for Frida, who wasn’t present at all. Her only focus was succeeding so she could get her daughter back.
As readers we suppressed ourselves along with Frida who had to suppress any emotion or opinion to align with what the school wanted. The parts where Frida was actively pushing down any feeling, trying not to cry (there were cameras everywhere) were visceral and relatable. However, I still think the pacing could have been done differently, giving us more time in the moment.
Final thoughts
Overall, The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan was a well done book. It will take you into a slight dystopia, as I heard it described. It’s a book about motherhood, what makes a good, bad and ok mother — and there may not be clear answers, a book about society taking charge, about what it takes to break a spirit. Definitely worth reading.
I’d rate it 6.5/10.
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