JeanzBookReadNReview: REVIEW - THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS BY JESSAMINE CHAN

Title: The School For Good Mothers
Author: Jessamine Chan
Publisher: Random House UK, Cornerstone,
Hutchinson Heinemann
Genre: General (Adult) Fiction, Literary Fiction,
Speculative Fiction, Dystopian, Futuristic
Release Date: 3rd March 2022

BLURB from Goodreads
'We have your daughter'

Frida Liu is a struggling mother. She remembers taking Harriet from her cot and changing her nappy. She remembers giving her a morning bottle. They'd been up since four am.

Frida just had to finish the article in front of her. But she'd left a file on her desk at work. What would happen if she retrieved it and came back in an hour? She was so sure it would be okay.

Now, the state has decided that Frida is not fit to care for her daughter. That she must be re-trained. Soon, mothers everywhere will be re-educated. Will their mistakes cost them everything?

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PURCHASE LINKS
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Amazon UK

REVIEW
I have seen two different covers for this book and though I do like both of them my preferred one is the UK version, I think it will definitely be eye catching on a book store shelf. As soon as I read the blurb, I knew I really had to read this book. It immediately made me think of Rebecaa Bowyer & Christina Dalcher books, it has that speculative, futuristic vibe.

The main character is Frida, who is of Chinese descent, and was originally happily married to Gust. They have a beautiful daughter that they have named Harriet. Harriet is half white, big brown eyes, curly dark brown hair with bangs. Sadly, for Frida, Gust finds another woman, called Susanna, who has lush, flowing red hair, white skin and huge blue eyes. Despite Frida still loving Gust and them having a child together he still goes off to live with Susanna, meaning they have to share their time with Harriet. They each have her 3.5 days per week. Frida has managed to arrange to work from home the days she has Harriet and for the majority of time this works out fine. Until she has her “bad day” her “very bad day”. Frida has left some important paperwork at the office, and she really can’t afford to get further behind she desperately needs to hold onto this job. Harriet is also playing up more than usual and Frida is finding everything difficult to cope with. She really yearns for some quiet, a coffee without a background of crying baby. Frida makes an awful split-second decision, she places Harriet into some sort of toddler seat, called and “exercsaucer,” leaves some biscuit-like snacks for her to eat and dashes out of the door.

Sometime later Frida receives a phone call, it’s an officer telling her that they have Harriet and she needs to report to the Station at Eleventh and Wharton as soon as possible. Apparently, a concerned neighbour reported a crying baby. Gust and Susanna are contacted to pick, 18 month old Harriet up, and Frida has to stay to be interrogated and questioned as to why she left her baby alone at home, and had she done it before, the questions go on and on, unnerving an already nerve frazzled Frida until she feels like she doesn’t know who she is or why she acted the way she did anymore. It is decided that both Frida and Harriet will have to undergo a psychological evaluation, Harriet will also receive therapy. Then there will be 3 supervised visits within the next 60 days. The state will collect data from all of these measures. CPS is rolling out a new program. Social worker will make her recommendations & a judge will decide what custody plan will be in Harriet’s best interest. Frida hires a lawyer, Renee, who advises her that the system is currently changing. Renee advises Frida to co-operate and to stop calling what happened a “mistake” and accept what it is being called by the CPS an “incident” and do whatever she is told. Frida is woken early the next morning by two CPS men setting up cameras in every room in her house. Everything she does will be monitored, phone calls, emails, etc. When she was interviewed the day before comments were made and reports have been made about the state of her house, so she had stayed up late manically cleaning everything, in the hope it would go in her favour. Renee tries her best to prepare Frida for the worst-case scenario, and she turns out to be right. Despite both Gust and Susanna speaking up on Frida’s behalf she is “sentenced” and given the option of taking part in a new initiative. Frida signs up to go to “The School For Good Mothers” programme, as for her there is no other option, there is no life where she doesn’t have Harriet in her life.

Those “guilty” mothers have to turn up at a specified time, with no luggage and then they are taken to the school. The women are separated into groups and have to introduce themselves and state their offence. Frida has to stand before these women and say her name and tell the other women that she is charged with neglect and abandonment. The other women take their turns, Linda is around the same age as Frida and has 6 children to 6 different fathers and is also charged with neglect and abandonment. Lucretia who becomes close to Frida, is there because her daughter broke her arm when she fell off a slide, and an ER Doctor reported her. Meryl is a white, and only a teenager herself was also reported by an ER Doctor for her daughter having bruises on her arm, Meryl also had drugs on her. All the women want their children back but like Frida are clueless as to what they will have to do during the year they spend at the school. There are several different units, each with their own requirements that the women have to meet to be in with a chance of regaining custody of their children.

I don’t think any of the women could have imagined they would be given realistic dolls to care for, to re-learn to be “good mothers.” It is quite evil really as the dolls are made to look really similar to the children they have been wrenched away from, both in skin colour and in ethnicity. Theres one black, one white, one Latina doll. Then there are two mixed race dolls, one half black/half white and one Eurasian doll. The women are told to name their children, Frida names her “new” child Emmanuelle. All the dolls have a camera inside them and they collect data, they gauge the mothers love, the mothers heart rates, to judge emotions. The dolls all have a blue knob on their backs, it is an opening to the area of their body that contains a strange blue liquid, that has to be changed and taken care of. None of the women find it especially easy to do this to their “child”. It’s almost a kind of mind game that is being played on the women. The dolls are almost human like and even they hate this part of their existence. Frida, in fact all the women are somewhat wary of the dolls to begin with, but as it is expected of them, they begin to bond with them. They have no option really as the tasks they are given to learn and the tests they have to take. It is quite a prison like existence for the women who are constantly under surveillance and under pressure to succeed and have to wear the drab uniform. The constant “carrot” that is dangled just out of reach for the women is a decision or ruling that they are now good enough mothers to have their children back. Even the weekly calls to speak to their children and those currently caring for them is used against them. How they spoke on the call, how they reacted to news they were told is all information that is collected and stored to help determine their capability to have access to their own children when they leave the home. The women have mixed thoughts and emotions about the phone calls. At least its some sort of contact with their children, but during these calls the fact those children are growing up without them is all too clear to see. Frida struggles on a number of occasions, when its clear to see that Gust’s new partner Susanna is taking on the full role of mother, when Harriet refers to her as Mummy-Sue-Sue. Then there are the physical changes Frida sees in Harriet, her eating habits are changed and she is rapidly changing from the little chubby Chinese baby Frida left alone on her “bad day”. Then on one call it’s clearly visible that Susanna has taken Harriet for a haircut. I think Frida sees that Harriets Chinese heritage is being pushed aside and her daughter is becoming more and more westernised.

I could seriously go on forever about this book, so much happens, there are so many layers, different characters and point of view to take into account. Every time you think the women are doing well the pink clad teachers throw something else into the mix. Just when you think Frida is firmly on the right track to getting access to Harriet despite having her phone call privileges removed, the addition of training the “bad fathers” begins. Of course, some of the women have been flirting and doing more with the male guards already, but now they have the fathers with their dolls. The women have heard rumours that “The School For Bad Fathers” has much better conditions than the mothers school. The different sides are intermingled for certain tasks. It seems like Frida and Emmanuelle are constantly placed with Tucker and his doll Jeremy, so much so a relationship seems inevitable. Frida is warned not to get too attached, the women in pink coats stating why would a reformed good mother want anything to do with a father who let their son fall out of a tree. The couple decide to be as careful as possible, neither wants to jeopardise their chances of regaining access to their children. Thinking they have not been seen, they exchange details, planning to meet up on the “outside”

I think at certain points in the books like the mothers I forgot that the dolls were not real children. There were some pretty tear jerker scenes within the book between the women and their dolls. Other sad sections of the book were the women and their reactions to news from home or being told that they were failing the tasks. The women in pink lab coats had very little sympathy for the women and used any and every advantage they could get to pressure the women more. Two examples were how they managed to easily use peer pressure and competitiveness to pit the women against each other. Some women couldn’t take it anymore and either left the programme, in doing so accepting they would never see their child again. Or even more tragically committed suicide when the opportunity presented itself to them.

I’ll be totally honest, at first, I didn't like the ending at all, but then when you I really thought about Frida, the type of person she was, how much she missed Harriet during her year at the school, I came to the conclusion that the ending was perfect and thinking about the character actually done in a realistic way. I would definitely check out any other books by this author. Maybe, there could be a, “The School For Good Fathers” book, or even novella, where we could read more about the fathers, learn what their true characters were, and if the women in the mother school were right about the men having it much easier than them.

My immediate thoughts upon finishing the book were Wow! What an amazing, thought provoking read, set in a believable futuristic system for "bad parents".

Summing up, this book really is speculative, futuristic at its best! I really, truly enjoyed reading the book. It really had me counting down to my “reading me time.”