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Sign up todayThe School for Good Mothers
A Novel
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Narrator
Catherine Ho
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Length
11 hours 56 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“What does it mean exactly to be a good mother? When Frida Liu’s husband leaves her for another woman, her young child Harriet gets sick and is crying incessantly, and Frida is feeling like an all-round failure, she snaps. She leaves her daughter at home to run to the office to pick up a couple of things. A neighbor hears the baby crying and calls social services. Frida is ordered to attend school to learn to be a better parent and win back custody. Only slightly dystopian in the way that situations often seem not-so-far in the future, Jessamine Chan’s book, The School for Good Mothers, is at times infuriating, at times heartbreaking and poignant, and one of the most haunting books I’ve read. It was included in several prestigious book award lists.”
— Mamie • Quail Ridge Books
Bookseller recommendation
“There’s no room for human fallibility in the dystopia of Jessamine Chan’s debut novel, so when Frida Liu — overwhelmed, sleep deprived, and desperate for a moment of reprieve — has a lapse in judgment as a mother, the consequences are swift and dire. Frida’s journey is a harrowing one, and the world she inhabits — where resources that could be used to support people are instead used to monitor, isolate, and punish them — hardly feels far-fetched. A tense, engrossing tale that stings with parental love and longing.”
— Tove • Powell's Books
Bookseller recommendation
“This book was absolutely wild. Chan really makes you examine motherhood and how subjective it can be. With her fictional school and its excessive tactics, you wonder how you can judge mothers - is it possible to learn how to be a 'good' mother and what does 'good' even mean. Every moment of this book will stress you out a little (in a good way) and get you thinking.”
— Kimi • Buttonwood Books and Toys
Bookseller recommendation
“This novel toggles between infuriating, terrifying, and comedic. An interesting study on what it means to be a woman and a mother. Extremely satisfied with an unexpected ending.”
— Kristine • Buttonwood Books and Toys
Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
Longlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction 2022 First Novel Prize
Selected as One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2022!
In this New York Times bestseller and Today show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance, in this “surreal” (People), “remarkable” (Vogue), and “infuriatingly timely” (The New York Times Book Review) debut novel.
Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.
Until Frida has a very bad day.
The state has its eye on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgement, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.
Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.
An “intense” (Oprah Daily), “captivating” (Today) page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages. Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.
Jessamine Chan’s short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts and a BA from Brown University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, the Jentel Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ragdale Foundation. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter.
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