I first read ( and wrote about) Imagine Me Gone-which chronicles a family wrestling with depression across two generations-in 2016. The book is tense and propulsive even as the reader feels viscerally the torturous time Frida’s forced to go without seeing her child its images and emotions linger well after one reaches its final page. What’s most terrifying about the novel is that Chan (with whom I share a book editor) has made sure that none of it feels too far removed from what is or has been on offer for parents, and mothers in particular-the demographics of the women at The School reflects the actual higher involvement of Child Protective Services with Black than white parents the dolls’ recording and transmitting data mirrors the tendency of totalitarian regimes to encourage children to report on their parents. They must not think of themselves, they certainly mustn’t lust. Her baby is placed in the sole care of her ex-husband and Frida is whisked to The School for Good Mothers, once a Haverford-esque Quaker-founded liberal arts college that’s been converted into a patrolled training camp for “good” parenting, where the mothers sent there receive AI dolls that resemble their children and begin to learn the hundreds of ways in which they are “bad”: too much hugging is seen as coddling, the wrong tone of voice might indicate latent rage. Jessamine Chan’s debut novel, The School for Good Mothers, newly out in paperback, begins with four terrifying words: “We have your daughter.” With those words, in the middle of what Frida will later call her “very bad day”-as a new mother working at the University of Pennsylvania, whose husband recently left her for a wealthy, sexy pilates instructor, Frida leaves her baby at home alone for two hours-her nightmare starts.
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