The School for Good Mothers: A Novel

Written by:
Jessamine Chan
Narrated by:
Catherine Ho

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
31
Narrator
11
Release Date
January 2022
Duration
11 hours 56 minutes
Summary
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.
Reviews
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Tara V.

I read this book for book club - every person hated it. Many refused to even finish reading the book. The most frustrating, annoying, and feel-bad book I’ve ever read.

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Michelle Andrews-Smith

this book has been added to a very short list of books not finished. The narrator sounded like a robot and the story was such a grind to listen too!

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Anonymous

It was different and kept me interested, but the ending totally blew it for me.

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Monica Z.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s tough in the sense that it is quite doom and gloom, but it is a very provocative and insightful piece about the state of motherhood today and what we expect from “good” mothers. It was a great book. I found no fault with the narrator, although I only listened to a few chapters here and there, the rest I read in my physical copy.

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Karen

I would never tell anyone to read

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