Frida Liu has a bad day and the state decides that she is incapable of looking after her young daughter Harriet. Frida is sent to the School for Good Mothers where, over the course of a year she will be taught how to be the perfect mother or face losing her parental rights completely.

Jessamine Chan has written a very interesting book, it explores many different areas of modern society and ideals. I felt desperately sorry for Frida and watched on in disbelief as she was separated from her daughter. The rehab programme she is sent to is barbaric in many ways and just odd in others. I got a bit bogged down by the training details in the middle of the book but looking back, maybe that was intentional so you can empathise with Frida and how long she has been away from Harriet?

The School for Good Mothers is a thought provoking read, I would recommend it, especially if you are looking for a book club choice as it would open up many discussions.

I have very conflicted feelings on this one. 4-star overall because the concept, the characters and the overall writing is very good. That said, this novel cannot be described as thrilling or page-turning, because the pace is very, very slow and the narrative almost disconnected from the events. The gut punch moments don’t land and there are so many parts of this dystopia that I kept waiting to be explained - how were the dolls so lifelike? what was the blue liquid? why did the fathers have it so much better? why were the staff so cruel? what created this hyper-vigilant world in the first place? - that simply didn’t come. And FINALLY, when the climax comes, the final moments are so flat and explained so fast you almost miss the significance. A good debut, but it could have been great.

The School for Good Mothers is a nightmarish and eerily plausible feminist dystopia. Frida Liu, a 39-year-old mother whose husband has left her for a younger woman, abandons her daughter Harriet in a moment of madness. She is then subjected to intense scrutiny and psychological torture as part of a desperate battle to avoid having her parental rights terminated, and is forced to spend a year at the eponymous correctional facility with other 'bad mothers' from Philadelphia learning how to be a responsible mother.

The majority of the novel is set in this 'school' and Jessamine Chan evokes a setting which is both horrifyingly sadistic but also a believable extrapolation of other state facilities: a world of shifting goalposts where inmates are consistently required to perform the impossible but nothing they achieve is good enough. Weekly ten-minute phone calls with their families can be arbitrarily suspended and minor misdemeanours are punished with visits to the talking circle as well as the threat of permanently losing parental rights. Chan's novel offers a biting critique of the unfeasible expectations placed on mothers - they are taught to speak 'motherese' and told that a mother's love should be able to surmount any obstacles (stranger danger, fire, traffic collisions), as well as exploring how other structural inequalities intersect within this setting.

Although there is a lot of dark humour and satire, it would be hard to describe this as an enjoyable read because of the crushing situation in which the protagonist spends most of the novel. It is, however, a chilling, original and immensely gripping novel that will stay with me for a long time. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

The School for Good Mothers is an unsettling and thought provoking book. Set in the near future, the book follows Frida as she deals with the fall out of a regrettable decision made, borne of exhaustion and overload, to leave her infant daughter alone in the house. She is then subject to a re-education in motherhood at the hands of the state.
With echoes of The Handmaid’s Tale, the extreme and disturbing nature of the state’s intentions towards wayward parents, who have often been judged unfit for seemingly minor offences, are slowly revealed as Frida progresses through her re-education.
One that lingers afterwards, this would be great for a book club.

Frida Liu is a working single mother in her late thirties. She’s had a ‘bad day’ (as she put it) and made a mistake of leaving her daughter, Harriet, unsupervised. Her neighbours alerted the police as they could hear a child crying.

Unfortunately, Frida loses the custody of her daughter, which is awarded to Gust, her ex-husband and Harriet’s father, and Susanna, Gust’s new girlfriend.

Frida is sent to a new rehabilitation facility for ‘bad’ mothers, where she will have a year to prove to the state that she is a good mother and worthy of looking after Harriet again.

The centre isn’t a happy place; women are stripped of their belongings, they cannot even keep the photos of their children. The school certainly feels more like a prison, than an actual school.

The women must learn different aspects of motherhood and they are put through ‘Units’, where their performance is scored. If they score low, then they lose certain privileges, for example a phone call with their child.

Obviously, Frida struggles every day, however, she is a remarkable and resilient character. She won’t give up until she gets Harriet back. Can she last a year?

You’ll have to read this book for yourselves to find out.

Wow! What a read. I found it fascinating, yet deeply disturbing in places. The notion of a ‘perfect mother’ doesn’t exist, as nobody’s perfect, but in this novel, this idea is palpable on each page. Women are supposed to be these warm and fuzzy home-makers who bake cookies with their children. If you don’t fit into this mould, then you can have your child taken away.

The facility had an Orwellian and Atwoodian feel to it. I sensed that everything the women did was stacked against them, no matter how much they tried, it was never enough.

I was shocked when I was reading how fathers were treated in their own facility for ‘bad’ fathers – they had more privileges than women, the guards weren’t so strict with them, and there was the sense of wanting the fathers to succeed. This imbalance was unfair, but such is life. I thought that was perfectly portrayed by the author.

I must admit I enjoyed the ending and I was left wanting more… Will there be a sequel? I surely hope so.

I LOVED this book. So clever. A new handmaid's tale. It was terrifying at times! Creepy and scarily real. It's begging to be made into TV or film

I’m a big dystopian fiction fan so was really excited to read this one! However, this is one I’m finding tricky to review. Did I enjoy it?! Overall I think yes, but I’m not entirely sure what the point of the book was. I came away at the end feeling rather disappointed and really frustrated!

I thought the idea of the book was great, but it just wasn’t executed quite right for me. Some parts are very harrowing to read and as a mum of three, I found bits hard to digest. Had this been counteracted with more ‘happier’ moments then I think it would have been easier to deal with, but I felt it was all quite negative and controlling. I guess that was the whole point of the ‘school’, but I would have liked to have seen a bit more optimism included!

Wow! What a read! I haven’t been as hooked as this for a long while, but this one seriously had me staying up at night!

Frida Liu is a single mother struggling to balance her work and family life. She has a terrible lapse in judgement (that highlights her mental health issues for readers straight away) but state forces decide her daughter should be taken away while Frida attends a school (under a new government scheme) to learn how to “mother” properly.

Now think of The Handmaid’s Tale for mums. I’m blown away by how many complex themes this novel tackles: mental health, racism and prejudice, abuse in various forms and femininity, all through the lens of motherhood and parenting. There’s a deeply sad thread about the way society judges women, but the female friendships and bonds formed highlight a beautiful (and ironic) strength.

Had I known this is actually sci-fi dystopian fiction, I don’t think I would have read it - me and sci-fi don’t usually mix (and you have to read this for yourselves to see where the futuristic element comes in, I can’t ruin it!) however, this is great proof of what getting outside of your comfort zone can lead to so massive thanks to @netgalley and @penguinukbooks 👌🏼

I do have to mention trigger warnings because any books that deal with sexual abuse or blunt language are ones I tend to avoid and there is quite a bit of that in here.

Still highly recommended from me as it’s got me out of a reading slump 👍🏼

Gosh not sure what to say about this one. Very disturbing but not really my type of book. Had dystopian vibes to it and just wasnt my thing at all.

Harriet is a Chinese-American single mum trying to hold on to an academic job with future progression prospects. Then she makes a terrible mistake when she just can't think straight, under pressure, leaving her baby daughter alone in their flat.

Social workers take her baby daughter away, and after court hearings, place her with her father and the partner he left then-pregnant Harriet for. Harriet is sentenced to a year's full time re-education programme as a condition for even considering reunification - forget that job! Harriet is living with other women under full time observation, scrutiny and criticism, all having to look after a kind of artificial reality doll baby with regular awful tests which are not designed to help women succeed. Harriet has to work out how to get along, or just deal with, her peers from a range of backgrounds, and there is much how class and race affects perceptions and judgements of women's behaviour.

The story was rather harrowing and made me sad and angry many times when reading. I saw aspects of what was likely to happen in advance, but by no means everything.

This may feel rather to close to home to anyone struggling with young children in difficult circumstances, but I would recommend this thought provoking near future feminist dystopia novel to any other readers who like fiction that explores social issues.

This book blew my mind! It was packed with feminism and resonated with me. Many complex relationships were written with such panache.

A literary masterpiece.

Not really for me I'm sorry to say. I thought I was going to enjoy the story but i found it a bit too far fetched and quite disturbing at times , I finished it but really didn't enjoy it. I'm sure it will appeal to some readers though who like these kind of books

I love myself some dystopian feminist fiction, so when this debut started popping up on my social feeds I just knew I had to read it. Low and behold the lovely peeps over at the Bit Crack Book Club decided to read it (I got sick so had to miss the buddy read!) and it came up on Netgalley so I was lucky enough to get to read it for free!

Let me set the scene. We are introduced to Frida: a recently separated single mother to a child who is under 2, trying to keep it all together. She is trying to work, trying to raise her child, contending with the emotional turmoil of being left for another woman (whilst postpartum!), and clearly fending off depression. Frida is isolated, her family live far away and she doesn’t really have a friends network. Then comes her bad day… she leaves her child alone after hours of screaming and she gets reported to the police.

In this not so distant future the issues can’t simply be rectified by time out, a break, cooperation between co-parents to work out a better system. No, Frida is monitored for months and then sent to a ‘school’ to relearn how to be a good mother by being taught by women who have never been mothers themselves.

Through the lessons and tests and relationships, this book really explored the pressures out on mothers todays to be perfect and the further pressure put on parents of different ethnicities, ages, and social classes. I think it also really highlighted the performative nature of parenting via social media today where perfect influencers make many feel ashamed and like they’re not good enough. In reality we know that almost no one really knows what they’re doing and everyone makes mistakes along the way. The biggest stand out for me was that those with lack of support and community are derided as bad parents whereas those with all the resources are hailed as the best when really they’re parenting for a place of extreme privilege.

Overall I found the story quite slowly paced, and although interesting I didn’t feel there was anything driving me to get to the end. I also felt that there were a lot of unexplored avenues for the story including perspective switching that could of improved the pace and the feeling of jeopardy.

That being said it’s a really good debut, and a concept I could imagine being adapted as a series or movie. I’m looking forward to seeing the development of Chan’s storytelling in the future.

Frida leaves her toddler alone for longer than she meant to. Nipping out to pick something up from the office, she gets sidetracked into getting a coffee, checking more emails and by a guilty admission, enjoying not having to listen to her daughter’s screams.
Unfortunately, Frida is caught and someone (she thinks) told the police. In this not too distant future world, Philadelphia is a test centre for a new way of punishing ‘bad mothers’, of education and rehabilitation.

In Jessamine Chan’s debut, she has written a compelling and thought provoking story about our personal responsibility to our children, how far we should go in terms of punishment, and if there’s really such a thing as a scale when it comes to mis-treating the children in our care. More impressive than that, Chan makes Frida a likeable character - we as readers instinctively dislike the new wife that her ex-husband and father of her child, left her for. Perhaps it’s because we see her not as a ‘bad mother’ but actually as a struggling human who needs love and support, not capital punishment and threat.

She is ordered to a facility where she is stripped of her belongings and placed in classes or teams of women who are similarly bad mothers. Quickly, they establish hierarchies based on what they are supposed to have done - one mother reportedly kept her kids in a hole in the ground. Surely, Frida reasons, she’s a better mother than her?
There’s an element of both racism and sexism in this story, where the women who have the most severe punishments are Black, Latinx or Asian (as Frida is). There is also a brother school where there is some communication possible with the dads, where Frida is appalled to find out that they don’t have half of the restrictions the women do, or half the threats. The message seems to be that society has decided that non-white women are expected and assumed to treat their children badly and so are subjected to bias and stereotypical behaviours, in the same way that mothers are expected to care for their kids and so when they don’t, their punishments are more severe than with fathers, who can find themselves being congratulated for being in the same house with their own children.

While I might have started the book thinking that Frida deserves to learn a lesson on leaving her toddler on her own for hours, the punishment meted out did not fit the crime and in fact was cruel, unusual and more than a bit unsettling. It reminded me of The Farm, a little bit of AI: Artificial Intelligence and somehow of BladeRunner(s).

I’m not surprised to hear that there’s a TV prorgramme being made, with big stars like Jessica Chastain attached already via her production company, Freckle Films. It would make a good Apple TV+ show.

Thanks as always to NetGalley and to RandomHouse for the DRC - this is out now to buy in all good bookshops!

So, at first I thought this book would be a DNF, but I kept at it and it did get better. I really enjoyed the premise of the plot, but felt it missed something in the middle. I didn't find it as engaging as it should have been.

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan is a novel about the ways in which mothers are judged and scrutinized.

Thought provoking, heart wrenching - this book took me a little way in to be totally hooked but once I was hooked I had to keep reading.
A very sudden ending though which made me feel I had a few pages missing from my download

I thought this was ok, it didn’t grab me like other books have, however I did persevere.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

Very dystopian story- a mother is sent to a school for good mothers after having a bad day, where she leaves her 18 month old daughter alone for a few hours.

She is referred to the school by social services as it is a new program, they monitor every move of the mothers and teach them how to be good.

The plot sounded very interesting, but it didn’t feel involved with the story, the only part I really felt was the beginning and the end.

This was an incredibly thought provoking read. Frida had a really bad day, she was neglectful as a mother- no doubt about it, she clearly needed help. The school she was sent to definitely helped in some ways but what a terrifying situation to be in. Some of the mothers had done little wrong and yet were sentenced to this, at times, barbaric place.
The authors mentions of race and sex were sadly very imaginable- I have no doubt being a different race would make your experience of an institution like that much worse than for white people. Ditto how much easier life seemed for the men.
I’m not usually a reader of dystopian novels but I was genuinely fascinated by this and could imagine lots of it to be true one day, which was both terrifying and, I guess, the point of the book!
I was a bit sad about the end, it felt unfinished- I re read the last few pages several times wondering if I had missed the actual end! But overall, a good and thought provoking book.