The School for Good Mothers

Product Review

- Jessamine Chan, Hutchinson Heinemann

"We have your daughter.” So starts Jessamine Chan's engrossing dystopian drama. Frida Liu is driving back from work when she picks up the message that summons her to the police station. It's a call that would strike fear into the heart of any parent and for Frida kickstarts a terrifying spiral of repercussions.

Quickly we discover that her 18-month-old daughter, Harriet, was found crying at home alone after a neighbour notified the police. Right from the get-go, Frida is treated as a “bad mother” who has failed at the most basic of female requirements. That she was exhausted, working for a demanding boss while minding her daughter; that her husband, Gust, had left her for a younger woman; a that she was alone in an unfriendly city struggling financially and emotionally all this matters little.