“Ma’am, we’ve been trying to reach you.”įrida hangs up and calls Gust, has to leave a message. She calls back and begins apologizing, explaining that she lost track of time. She pulls onto the first side street off Grays Ferry and double-parks. She meant to get home an hour and a half ago. She pauses the message, puts down her phone. On the voice mail, the officer tells her to come to the station immediately. It’s the first Tuesday in September, the afternoon of her one very bad day, and Frida is trying to stay on the road.
Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic. That she can learn to be good.Īn “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. 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.įaced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground who let their children walk home alone. The state has its eye on mothers like Frida. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. 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.įrida Liu is struggling. Selected as One of Barack Obama’s Summer 2022 Reading List Picks!
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