3.75 rounded up.

This was a good dystopian focused on parenting and the control of the government in that process. The premise was interesting and well constructed with moments that made me cringe and others that had my hackles raised. I'm all for keeping kids safe, but yeesh...this went a bit far. I'm by no means saying that made the book bad...that's what made it good! I love dystopians that push the envelope and really explore the possibilities of cultural change. This one will definitely stick with me.

As a mother to young children, I could identify with many of the maternal characters in the book, so this hit a bit hard. All parents are prone to mistakes, but in Chan's world those are simply not permitted. Your child had an accident while playing in the backyard alone and you wound up taking them to the hospital with a broken bone? Now you stand to potentially lose your parental rights. Yikes. It is a completely unforgiving system that gave me crazy anxiety thinking about the ways that outsiders could judge my parenting. (Over the days I was reading this book my youngest managed to color furniture with a Sharpie and dumped bottles of cleaner all over the living room. Neither of my children adhered well to their bedtime and I definitely raised my voice more than once. All of these things could have landed me in The School for Good Mothers.)

There was a lot of social commentary rolled up into the prose and the characters that I felt was well handled. There was a great consideration of systemic racism and other prejudices in current society that I found interesting. There were a lot of things that also had me thinking with regard to the cultural and generational differences in child rearing. There was a lot at play here and I felt like Chan really explored the different possibilities to give a well-rounded view.

The tough spots for me were in the pacing and the ending. There were some great things explored in the setting of the school, but overall that situation went on for too long and the pacing really started to drag. I was surprised to see that the book was under 400 pages when I finished because it certainly felt longer. A little bit of tightening to these scenes would have made a great difference because while the writing is good, it just started to feel repetitive.

The ending was also good in concept, but felt a bit rushed. I was caught a little off guard by what happened in the last few chapters of the book, so there felt like a bit of a lapse of logic, but I think a bit more fleshing out of these situations would have given me the feel that it was a continuation of the style that had been present for the rest of the book. Instead, it felt like the situation where the author was just ready to be done writing and get to the point. It wrapped up quickly and neatly, but felt a bit overly jarring.

Chan's writing is definitely intriguing and for a debut this was quite well done. I am interested to see what other concepts she tackles and how her writing will mature in successive novels.