Book Review: Jessamine Chan's The School for Good Mothers

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with a copy of Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers.

Frida is beyond exhausted. She is newly divorced and struggling to achieve perfectionism, while caring for her eighteen-month old daughter and working full-time. Her mind is preoccupied with her ex-husband Gust, who has moved on to a new life with his much younger new wife. Not only is the new wife the woman Gust cheated on Frida with, but now Frida must share custody of Harriet with them.

During one of Frida’s weeks caring for Harriet, Frida makes a life-altering decision. While Harriet is napping, Frida decides to go on a quick errand to her office, where she is feeling the pressure of deadlines and trying to not have single-motherhood impact her career. Harriet will never even know that her mother was gone. Frida’s exhaustion makes her forgetful and the quick trip takes longer than she originally planned. By the time she returns home, the police have been notified about her neglect.

The consequences are severe. If Frida would like to maintain a relationship with her daughter, she must attend a year-long education camp, where mothers who have been neglectful, abusive or otherwise “unmotherly” are trained to be “good mothers.” They mothers are psychologically punished for their bad choices and must pass a series of tests where the odds of passing are low. Even if they survive the year at camp, if they do not pass the tests, their parental rights will be severed. During her time at the camp, she has limited contact with Harriet and during those calls, Frida is tormented to see her daughter increasingly look towards Gust’s new wife, as a mother figure.

The stakes are raised when realistic robots, robots that mimic the features of the mother’s own children, are assigned to each mother. The robots are new and experimental, but have been designed to calculate the emotions, including the range of love and tenderness in which each mother is capable. The mothers will be evaluated not only by their harsh human guards, but also by these previously untested robots.

The School for Good Mothers is a phenomenal debut novel. I was hooked from the first chapter and horrified by the content. It’s very much in the vein of Margaret Atwood or the television show Black Mirror. It has strong feminist themes, taking a deep dive at how women are carry unfair burdens in society and how expectations of how women should behave, especially stereotypes of motherhood, can be very detrimental.

I read this book a few months ago and I think it is especially timely with the latest threats to Roe v. Wade. Both the recent court news and this book, highlight the ways in which American society does not support women, even when women have children and need help. The School for Good Mothers shows the contrast in which women and men are treated. Gust behaves poorly, but is treated like a saint. He can leave his former wife struggling and move forward with zero repercussions. The women in the school know that there is a nearby school for fathers, but they learn that the fathers are not given the same level of punishment that the mothers are given. Women should know better and a woman who is not judged to be appropriately motherly is damaged. The men are allowed freedoms and access that the women are not permitted and their tests are not are dire. The women are facing judgement, while the men are biding their time.

The School for Good Mothers is a powerful and gut-wrenching read that I recommend to everyone. It’s fiction, but it reads like a terrifying, near-future reality.

Book Review- Sarah Gailey's The Echo Wife

Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge for providing me with a free copy of Sarah Gailey’s novel, The Echo Wife, in exchange for an honest review.

Evelyn, a scientist who is a pioneer in the field of cloning, is married to her job. Her dedication and singular focus is so fierce, that she is blindsided when her husband, Nathan, asks for a divorce. Soon after they begin to live separate lives, Evelyn discovers that Nathan, a fellow, albeit somewhat lazy scientist, has been stealing Evelyn’s work for very personal reasons. Nathan has created, Martine, a clone of Evelyn.

Even more shocking, Martine is pregnant, giving Nathan the one thing that Evelyn denied him; a baby. Theoretically, Martine’s pregnancy should be impossible and morally, it is dubious, as Nathan programed Martine to both be compliant and to have strong desires for a baby. Should a clone have the same rights as humans, and if so, does this pregnancy violate Martine’s rights?

The existence of Martine threatens to damage Evelyn’s credibility and research funding. The threat level is dramatically increased when Martine calls Evelyn in desperation, asking for help that only Evelyn can provide. When Evelyn and Martine connect, they begin to unravel the depth of Nathan’s deceit and Evelyn begins to question what it means to be human.

I throughly enjoyed The Echo Wife. Admittedly, early on, I thought, “Oh, I know where this story is going,” but I couldn't have been more wrong. It’s surprising and fresh. Set in the near future, the plot has shades of West World, Black Mirror, The Stepford Wives, Frankenstein, and Ex Machina.

The story is sharp and fast-paced like a thriller, yet it is dotted with questions that make you consider what it means to be human or what is the morality of creating a life? Is a clone life the same as human life and do clones have agency? Should they have agency? When Evelyn is confronted with interacting with a clone in a real world setting, she has difficulty in seeing her life’s work as just science experiments. She is surprised by how Martine interacts with the world, sometimes against her programing.

Gailey’s characters are engaging, especially Evelyn, as The Echo Wife is told from her first-person perspective. Gailey does an excellent job at scene setting, in particular the laboratory scenes where she is describing the process of creating a clone. Several scenes in The Echo Wife are quite graphic and hard to stomach, but they are not gratuitous. They serve to build the greater story and play into the theme of humanity.

I was also surprised to discover that The Echo Wife is a kick-ass feminist story. Evelyn and Martine are strong women. Martine was created to be a sweet, “Stepford Wife” for Nathan, but that is certainly not where she views her destiny. Evelyn, as strong as she is in many ways, also admits a prior weakness for Nathan and a jealousy towards Martine. The arc of the story sees her handling these emotions and learning what it means to be both a better scientist and a better person.

I can’t praise The Echo Wife enough. Gailey is a “new to me” author and I look forward to reading her other books!

Book Review - Michelle Richmond's The Marriage Pact

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group for providing me with an advance copy of Michelle Richmond's novel, The Marriage Pact, in exchange for an honest review.

PLOT- Jake is a psychologist in a small private practice and Alice is a former rock star turned lawyer. After a short courtship, they decide to take the plunge and get married. At the last minute, Alice jokingly invites a client, a famous musician whose case she worked on, to their wedding. Not only does he attend, but the singer and his wife give Alice and Jake an unusual wedding present. Their present is an invitation to an exclusive club called "The Pact."

The Pact is a group of like-minded couples, powerful couples, who enforce a set of rules designed to strengthen their marriages. When they return from their honeymoon, Alice and Jake are met with a representative from The Pact who asks them to formally sign a contract to seal their membership. Alice and Jake sign, not fully realizing the impact that joining will have on their lives. 

The Pact actively monitors their marriage, looking for any cracks. Alice and Jake are given a hefty instruction manual, which details the actions they must take, like booking quarterly vacations and always picking up the phone when their spouse rings. When they don't take their responsibilities seriously, they face the consequences, quite severe consequences. Jake discovers an old college girlfriend is also in The Pact and she tries to warn him. According to her, those who do not obey mysteriously vanish. Who is the mysterious group leader named Orla? Why were Jake and Alice chosen? Can they get out of The Pact alive?

LIKE- The Marriage Pact has a Twilight Zone/Black Mirror type quality to it. The tone is ominous, unsettling, and creepy through-out. I never quite knew where the story was heading, but I was happy to keep turning the pages. The intrigue and pacing never dropped. 

I didn't account for how dark Richmond's story would go. The Marriage Pact is utterly disturbing. There are many chapters with scenes of detailed and imaginative torture. I'm left with imagery that will likely never leave my mind. I'm talking stuff like in the Saw film franchise. It's horrific. 

The story is told in first person with Jake narrating. This is an interesting choice, because early on, all of the terrible things happen to Alice, leaving Jake ( along with the reader) imagining and worrying about what is happening. My stomach was in knots. The Marriage Pact is a visceral reading experience. Jake and Alice are both affable characters and it's easy to root for both their marriage and their individual characters to succeed. They are every-day people caught up in a completely mad situation. Richmond is brilliant with her character development.

I was worried that the ending would fall short and I felt like this until the final twist and the final chapter. Richmond has written the perfect ending. I can't imagine anything else working.

DISLIKE- I was left with a few questions. How did The Pact manage to grow and become so powerful? At what point did Orla lose her grasp? Although the concept was intriguing, I felt I had to seriously suspend my disbelief. I just can't imagine so many people going along with this group. I wanted more backstory on the group and its founder.

RECOMMEND- Yes, if you like creepy suspense stories and if you can handle highly disturbing content. The Marriage Pact is a thrill ride and Richmond is a fabulous storyteller.