A dystopia for mothers

A disturbing work bordering on the bizarre, this novel is about motherhood in an alternate world.

Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers is a novel about motherhood, a harsh government, an institute where bad mothers are turned into good ones, and a woman’s desire to see her child again. This is a dystopian, and somewhat alternate reality story set in Philadelphia. The protagonist Frida Liu finds herself in the thick of a storm ⁠— and a confusing series of events that throws her into a prison-like environment where just about everything is as bizarre as she can imagine.

Thirty-nine-year-old Frida is the single mother of little Harriet. Her husband Gust has abandoned her for a much younger woman. And then, Frida is suddenly investigated by very, very aggressive child protection services agents, the police, and hostile social workers. She has, they say, been negligent of her child.

For Frida did leave her toddler daughter alone in the house for a couple of hours. She was harassed, stressed out, and exhausted, and she thought she’d get back home to Harriet before anything happened…but someone called the authorities on her. Perhaps it was the nosy neighbour.

What follows is a series of events out of Frida’s control.

Security cameras are set up all over her house to watch her every move. Harriet is taken away and put in the care of her father Gust and his very attractive, health-obsessed girlfriend Susanna. Frida finds herself in court, talking to psychologists, having herself evaluated. Her time with Harriet is restricted, and the social workers she deals with are none too friendly, to put it mildly.

And then…she is put in The School for Good Mothers.

Perplexing turn

There is a lot going on in this novel, and Frida, stressed out and perpetually the victim, never seems to catch a break. She comes across as harassed, a little too self-indulgent, a little too whiny, a little too fixated on race. Gust, her husband, has little personality outside of his handsome physique. Susanna is predictably the younger, healthy woman ⁠— she likes her diet, is stunning to look at, and of course, everybody thinks she is a much, much better mother to Harriet than her own biological mother. Susanna thinks nothing of putting the toddler on odd diets, and yet nobody says a thing.

As for the School…it does get rather strange over there. There are routines, regimes, diets, and intense psychological pressure. Nearly every activity is described in painstaking detail. The ‘bad’ mothers there are allotted robots that look like children and behave infuriatingly. Frida’s every activity is documented.

The premise of this book, while interesting at the outset, quickly turns bizarre. This is a very wordy story, focusing too much on too many details, especially at the School. The introduction of the peculiar robot children is particularly weird. The race of almost every individual is noted. The plot moves very slowly, and it is not pleasant reading.

This is a novel that tries to be literary but instead is verbose, slow-moving, and illogical. Too many ideas are crammed into this story, including social inequalities and racial profiling. Those are fine ideas to explore, sure, however, The School for Good Mothers is rather too prosaic and too focused on its own details, to recount any of those problems with sufficient empathy.

The social workers, with their agendas and sense of superiority, are almost caricatures. And the robot children are creepy, and peculiarly programmed to behave in the oddest ways possible. It is also odd that the School attempts to teach mothering from scratch to women who are already mothers in the first place.

Overall, this is a disturbing, strange read.