The School for Good Mothers: A Novel
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.
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Community Reviews
2.5 stars, but Iâm rounding up. I have complicated feelings about this book.
If youâre a mother and read this you will probably have a vastly different experience reading it than I did. I mean, I couldnât sympathize with any of the mothers. I couldnât. I couldnât sympathize with abusers and people that abandoned their children, and what the main character did was /wrong/. Full stop. âIt was just a bad day.â Okay, but your kid could have died. Is this supposed to be commentary on the struggles middle class mothers face? Commentary on how mothers are treated differently than fathers? Commentary on race, mental illness, class, divorce, politicsâ¦thereâs too much. Itâs like the author pulled up a list of Hot Topics to cram into this book. Sometimes it works! But a lot of times I feel like Iâm reading an academic article on how the School for Good Mothers works. Itâs repetitive. Also, the whole âromanceâ thing while at the school was endlessly frustrating. And the ending? Donât get me started. Iâm sure this will be held as âthe new Handmaidâs Taleâ but yâall, this is not it.
If youâre a mother and read this you will probably have a vastly different experience reading it than I did. I mean, I couldnât sympathize with any of the mothers. I couldnât. I couldnât sympathize with abusers and people that abandoned their children, and what the main character did was /wrong/. Full stop. âIt was just a bad day.â Okay, but your kid could have died. Is this supposed to be commentary on the struggles middle class mothers face? Commentary on how mothers are treated differently than fathers? Commentary on race, mental illness, class, divorce, politicsâ¦thereâs too much. Itâs like the author pulled up a list of Hot Topics to cram into this book. Sometimes it works! But a lot of times I feel like Iâm reading an academic article on how the School for Good Mothers works. Itâs repetitive. Also, the whole âromanceâ thing while at the school was endlessly frustrating. And the ending? Donât get me started. Iâm sure this will be held as âthe new Handmaidâs Taleâ but yâall, this is not it.
Meh. I expected this book to be more captivating, a page-turner, and it didn’t do that for me. More of dystopian-like societal read, it was an interesting concept that I just felt missed the mark. It was just reading disappointment after disappointment, which I understand to be the premise to exaggerate the severity of the consequences for Frida. The ending was lackluster and just felt for as short as the book was, the chapters dragged on and was not leaving me eager to turn the page.
Wow. What a story. I can’t begin to express how much this book moved me and changed my mindset on parenting. I’m not a parent and never will be, but the efforts people put in to care for the ones they love are extraordinary. This is a story of resilience.
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