The School for Good Mothers - Jessamine Chan

[elkiedee]

99p in Kindle daily deals today Wednesday 10 August, until midnight UK time (if you've missed this when you see it, a lot of such offers recur)

I read this disturbing recently published novel a few weeks ago, via Netgalley and found it interesting but disturbing. Would recommend looking out for however you access your reading (libraries, shops, charity shops, Kindle) so long as you're not going through a crisis with your own kids at the moment. If you think it might make you too paranoid, I wouldn't read it right now.

This is a compelling, scary and topical near future speculative novel about motherhood. Harriet is a Chinese-American single mum trying to hold on to a professional job (academic) and maybe future prospects, who makes a terrible mistake when she just can't think straight, under pressure. Social workers take her baby daughter off and, after court hearings, baby is placed with the ex husband who left pregnant Harriet for another woman, and she finds herself sentenced to a year's full time re-education programme as a condition for even considering reunification - forget that job. Online/phone contact with her daughter is very limited and baby is now living with her dad and his new partner. Lots about Harriet interacts with her peers from a range of backgrounds, and how class and race affects perceptions and judgements of women's behaviour. I saw aspects of what was likely to happen in advance, but by no means everything. The story was rather harrowing and made me sad and angry many times when reading.

Sounds an interesting book but I don't think I'd cope with it at the moment @elkiedee

Thanks @PritiPatelsMaker - While I would recommend this book it is with caveats because I would have found this very hard to read at times when my children were small, and it's precisely because we came through and out the other side thanks to the support of children's centres and their workers. This is something that was then taken away in government cuts from the general election of 2010.

I don't know your situation but I'm hoping that life gets less tough for you and yours. Virtual hugs.

Funny, I thought I'd posted about it but maybe not. Maybe because it was so dark.

I read a laudatory capsule synopsis and thought I'd love it, as a fun near-future dystopia. But I didn't. It starts off with a fun concept, but for me it bogged down as she just slogged through the "re-training" - and then the end felt like a cheat!

Fun is not a word I'd associate with dystopian fiction. Dark humour, perhaps. Fun? No.

@MsAmerica - totally agree.

Im currently on p258 and im so over the retraining part. It's going on for sooooo long. Glad it was 99p on kindle because I would be really mad
😫

It wasn’t perfect, but it was fascinating in places. All the You Must Do This Or You Are A Terrible Parent stuff you read on MN or hear in rl, crystallised into a formal ‘re-education’ institution was frighteningly believable. So, she left her child alone - the reader probably agrees that’s bad, but does she deserve the sentence she gets? Not really, imo. Nice little touches like the Fathers institution being much more lax and forgiving.
Her Ex husband and his new partner were infuriating. Her parents were well written and the explorations of race and family were interesting.

Wonder how far off we are from those Fake Children they have to parent? They were creepy.

@Saucery yes definitely scary how it could become a possibility.

I did agree it was bad. If I needed to run into work to get something I wouldn't leave my child at home so that grates on me

And the husband - very irritating. Especially the step mum seemingly taking over. I felt for Frida during that part

Sure, I'd consider dark humor to be "fun." But just a concept that's clever would be something I'd consider "fun."

I've just finished this. Disappointing ending. I have so many questions... 😤

You might like this, about her publication process:

How to Get Published: A Book’s Journey From ‘Very Messy’ Draft to Best Seller
Although Chan had published a few short stories and had worked at Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine that gave her some insight into the process, she had few connections. And she had no platform: She was not a celebrity, had no personal brand and was not on social media. She lived a quiet life in Philadelphia with her husband and her child, whose birth made her recast the book — again.
And yet Chan’s “The School for Good Mothers” was published in January 2022 — and soared to the best-seller list, catapulting her to literary stardom. Last month, former President Barack Obama featured it on his summer reading list.
How does a debut novel go from a “very messy” draft on a writer’s desk to a published book, on display in bookstores around the country?jacklimpert.com/2022/08/how-to-get-a-book-published/

Thanks @MsAmerica, that's a really interesting article.

Did you take your username from the 2020 series I still haven't got round to watching on Iplayer?

No, @elkiedee. I don't even know what series you're referring to. I just thought it was polite to identify myself as American in case anyone ever wonders about my ignorance in matters that all Brits know.

Glad you liked the aticle.

Thank you for the article. There is a TV series that was shown on the BBC, perhaps in 2019, that I was either too unwell or too busy to watch when first broadcast. It is about 7 American women feminists of the 20th century, including Betty Friedan of The Feminine Mystique, Gloria Steinem (?) and others. I hoped to catch up in lockdown via Iplayer but even then I was too distracted to watch more than one or two whole series of anything. I will come back and find a link when I'm less tired and sad (RL hurts just now) unless anyone else beats me too it.

Not sure I could read that book this month, though I think this month's reading slump has nothing whatsoever to do with the books I'm reading - finally reading more than 5 pages without falling asleep or looking online for news for the first time in nearly 2 weeks on Tuesday really helped (and no, this actually has nothing to with the death of the Queen).

Thank you, @elkiedee! This sounded so interesting, and had me wondering whether it was produced by the BBC or imported from the U.S, so I looked it up. It must be this:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08gglyp

Looks good. Gloria Steinem has been popping up a bit in the news lately, speaking out against the conservative war against abortion.

Yes, @MsAmerica, that's the programme!