School For Good Mothers: Book Review
By Sioph LealThe School for Good Mothers is a compelling and thought-provoking book that delves into the complex and often challenging journey of motherhood. The story revolves around a unique school that offers courses to help women become "good mothers." The book explores the societal pressure and expectations placed on women to be perfect mothers, while at the same time delving into the deep-rooted fears, doubts, and struggles that many mothers experience. With its realistic portrayal of the joys and pains of motherhood.
Centring around 39-year-old Frida Liu, a single mother with a respectable but dull job at the University of Pennsylvania. Frida has an 18-month-old daughter named Harriet and shares custody with her ex-husband and his younger girlfriend. On Frida’s dubbed “bad day”, she leaves Harriet alone for two hours and is taken to police custody for child abandonment. Following her bad day, Frida is placed under surveillance, with cameras installed in every room of her home (the only exception being her bathroom), and her calls are monitored. Her court appointed therapy sessions are being recorded and professionals question why Frida isn’t raising Harriet as bilingual. They deem that Harriet is being denied a crucial part of her heritage.
The School for Good Mothers had the chance to be a great commentary on the pressures that mothers face, and how they are held to an unachievable perfect standard, intertwined with the racialized bias in parenting models with a dystopian backdrop. In Jessamine Chan’s debut novel, it was supposed to be the next The Handmaid’s Tale, but instead falls flat of any coherent and captivating storytelling.
Within the dystopian world, the actual school for good mothers as each mother assigned their own ‘doll,’ that has feelings, and experiences pain etc. It was an interesting premise that wasn’t explored deep enough. Combined with the repetitive prose, the concept of this book was something that did not have the right follow through. Instead of being drawn into this unforgiving world, readers are given a story that felt as if you were reading a newspaper rather than a novel. With too many characters being added and suddenly dropped, Chan could have explored how different cultures raise children. Perhaps had the character been given more depth and an improved writing style, The School for Good Mothers could have lived up to its expectation.
The premise of this book could have been a great commentary on society’s unfair expectations on mothers, but instead the author panned away from important, impactful moments such as what could have been an emotionally charged scene involving Frida’s parent evaluations at the school, or even the trial at the end of the novel.
Overall, The School for Good Mothers could have lived up to the expectations but falls flat with an ending that felt too safe, to a story that lacks a lot of details and word building. Considering the story is about who one bad day can snowball and devastatingly impact characters' lives, it lacks the emotional drive or impact it should have had.