Review: THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS by Jessamine Chan

 

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. What’s worse is she can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with their angelic daughter Harriet does Frida finally feel she’s attained the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she’s just enough.

Until Frida has a horrible day.

The state has its eyes on mothers like Frida — ones who check their phones while their kids are on the playground; who let their children walk home alone; in other words, mothers who only have one lapse of judgement. Now, a host of government officials will 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 she can live up to the standards set for mothers — that she can learn to be good.

This propulsive, witty page-turner explores the perils of “perfect” upper-middle-class parenting, the violence enacted upon women by the state and each other, and the boundless love a mother has for her daughter.

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This book is just... AMAZING. I have no other word for it.

It took me a while to read it all, because it's quite dense--yet I don't mean that in a negative way. A lot happens in this book--a lot of really shocking things--and it really makes you think. I found that I needed a lot of 'breathing space' around my reading sessions for this book to really digest it and fully comprehend the terrifying world that Jessamine Chan has come up with for this one--and it's especially terrifying given how close it feels to real life.

There's a lot of important discourse in this book surrounding motherhood, the role of women, and parental responsibility. While we can definitely argue the case that Frida is flawed and could be seen as a 'bad mother' after leaving her baby alone for an afternoon, we get to see the nuances of her character. Does one moment of 'bad mothering' make her a totally awful mother? Where exactly is the line? Because as the novel progresses, we are rooting for her, yet feeling like a happy ending isn't on the cards because of the truly horrific worldbuilding Chan cleverly incorporates into this story.

Characterisation for all the characters is strong and impressive. I just cannot stop thinking about this book.

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Review: ANY OTHER FAMILY by Eleanor Brown

 

Any Other Family by Eleanor Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

he New York Times bestselling author of The Weird Sisters returns with a striking and intimate new novel about three very different women facing an impossible question: What makes a family?

They look just like any other family. But they aren't a family like any other – not quite. Instead, they are three sets of parents who adopted four biological siblings, committing to keeping the children connected after the death of their grandmother.



Tabitha, who adopted the twins, is the planner of the group, responsible for coordinating playdates and birthdays and Sunday night dinners, insistent that everything happens just so. Quiet and steady Ginger, single mother to the eldest daughter, resists the forced togetherness, her own unsettled childhood leaving her wary of trusting too much. And Elizabeth is still reeling from going directly from failed fertility treatments into adopting a newborn, terrified that her unhappiness means she was not meant to be a mother at all.

But when the three women receive a surprising call from their children’s birth mother, announcing she is pregnant again and wants them to help her find an adoptive family for this child too, the delicate bonds they are still struggling to form threaten to collapse. As tensions rise, the women reckon with their own feelings about what it means to be a mother and what they owe each other as a family.

Set across the span of a family vacation, one full of boisterous laughter and emotional upheaval, Any Other Family is a thought-provoking and poignant look at how families shift and evolve and a striking portrait of motherhood in all its forms.

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I don't normally read contemporary fiction like this, but I'm really glad I did. It has a slower pace to what I'm used to, but the character portraits in this are phenomenal. I honestly can't get over that. They're so, so good. Like, it's all close-third person, being narrated by the three main women, and each feels so distinct. I was particularly impressed with how different Elizabeth's narrative voice was. Because this takes skill.

I read this when I was having a miscarriage, and surprisingly, reading a book all about motherhood was actually really cathartic and soothing.

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Review: THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR by Shari Lapena

 

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It all started at a dinner party. . .

A domestic suspense debut about a young couple and their apparently friendly neighbors--a twisty, rollercoaster ride of lies, betrayal, and the secrets between husbands and wives. . .

Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all--a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.

Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for years.

What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family--a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.

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This is the first Shari Lapena novel I've read, and it was an easy read. I was having intensive medical treatment for 6 weeks in hospital and I had a pile of books that I'd got from a secondhand book shop. This was one of them, and yeah, it kept me entertained. But I found the first half of the story was much better.

The set-up is good in terms of execution and tension and pacing--there's a missing baby and suspicion is cast from one character to another--but I also found the set-up not that plausible. Would parents really leave their six-month-old daughter at home on her own? Would they assume that she really would be fine? Because as soon as we had this set-up, I knew what was going to happen. It was kind of obvious and so, so predictable. And it also really annoyed me and made me not like the parents too.

What wasn't obvious though were developments in the second half--yes, I love when a story does this, but it didn't quite feel organic enough to the story for me. There were also so many twists being piled on top of each other by the end, and it almost felt that the author was just trying to make the reader more and more surprised. So by the time I was finishing the book, my disbelief was no longer suspended. I wasn't as on-page in the story as I had been before. I felt like I was reading the ending of a book, rather than learning what was actually going on. It was a bit infuriating really to be pulled out of the story, when on a craft level, this book had started so well in terms of set-up.

However, there was an issue with the writing that bothered me, and this was the dialogue tags. Just so many of them... I kept thinking, why not just use 'said'? But I haven't deducted a star from the review though as this book did what I wanted it to: it kept me entertained and distracted from my medical treatment, and there's no doubt that it's compulsive and a page-turner. I will be picking up more books by this author in the future.

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