
The School for Good Mothers
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Catherine Ho
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By:
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Jessamine Chan
About this listen
Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
Longlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction 2022 First Novel Prize
Selected as One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2022!
In this New York Times bestseller and Today show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance, in this “surreal” (People), “remarkable” (Vogue), and “infuriatingly timely” (The New York Times Book Review) debut novel.
Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. She can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with Harriet, their cherubic daughter, does Frida finally attain the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she is just enough.
Until Frida has a very bad day.
The state has its eye on mothers like Frida. The ones who check their phones, letting their children get injured on the playground; who let their children walk home alone. Because of one moment of poor judgement, a host of government officials will now determine if Frida is a candidate for a Big Brother-like institution that measures the success or failure of a mother’s devotion.
Faced with the possibility of losing Harriet, Frida must prove that a bad mother can be redeemed. That she can learn to be good.
An “intense” (Oprah Daily), “captivating” (Today) page-turner that is also a transgressive novel of ideas about the perils of “perfect” upper-middle class parenting; the violence enacted upon women by both the state and, at times, one another; the systems that separate families; and the boundlessness of love, The School for Good Mothers introduces, in Frida, an everywoman for the ages. Using dark wit to explore the pains and joys of the deepest ties that bind us, Chan has written a modern literary classic.
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Critic reviews
"Ho holds the listener captive as she narrates this deeply engrossing portrait of the boundless depth of a mother’s love. Her exquisite narration channels a heartbreaking, terrifying, and prescient story that leaves the listener gutted." (AudioFile Magazine)
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I could not put this book down
- By Melody on 03-22-23
By: Heather O'Neill
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A Certain Hunger
- By: Chelsea G. Summers
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Original Recording
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Eat Pray Love meets American Psycho in a seductive and sinister debut literary thriller. Food critic Dorothy Daniels indulges in her homicidal urges by murdering her lovers and devouring their organs in this intense, visceral, and lushly told tale of food, sex, power, and the pursuit of a very particular taste set between New York and Italy. Please Note: A Certain Hunger contains adult language and depictions of violence. Discretion is advised.
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Ugh.
- By Kimberly on 02-03-20
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The Power
- By: Naomi Alderman
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Power, the world is a recognizable place: There's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power: They can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets.
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A necessary read
- By Grace on 11-22-17
By: Naomi Alderman
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The New Me
- By: Halle Butler
- Narrated by: Halle Butler
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Millie, 30, just can't pull it together. Misanthropic and morose, she spends her days killing time at a thankless temp job until she can return home to her empty apartment, where she oscillates between self-recrimination and mild delusion, fixating on all the little ways she might change her life. Then she watches TV until she drops off to sleep, and the cycle begins again. When the possibility of a full-time job offer arises, it seems to bring the better life she's envisioning within reach. But with it also comes the paralyzing realization of just how hollow that vision has become.
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Might have been an ok read...
- By mfseegs on 04-24-19
By: Halle Butler
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The Five Wounds
- A Novel
- By: Kirstin Valdez Quade
- Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and 33-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his 15-year-old daughter, Angel, shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother's house, setting her life on a startling new path.
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yes!
- By Ally on 03-13-22
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My Sister, the Serial Killer
- A Novel
- By: Oyinkan Braithwaite
- Narrated by: Adepero Oduye
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her “missing” boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit. Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works.
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That’s it?!!!
- By Danni B. on 12-26-18
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Beautiful Country
- A Memoir
- By: Qian Julie Wang
- Narrated by: Qian Julie Wang
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country”. Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal”, and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another.
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Enough already !
- By Anonymous User on 10-22-21
By: Qian Julie Wang
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What's Mine and Yours
- By: Naima Coster
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into predominantly White high schools on the west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways over the span of the next 20 years.
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Wonderful book!!
- By Susan 🎧Audible-a-holic🎧 Crowe on 03-15-21
By: Naima Coster
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Cursed Bunny
- Stories
- By: Bora Chung, Anton Hur - translator
- Narrated by: Greta Jung
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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From an author never before published in the United States, Cursed Bunny is unique and imaginative, blending horror, sci-fi, fairytales, and speculative fiction into stories that defy categorization. By turns thought-provoking and stomach-turning, here monsters take the shapes of furry woodland creatures and danger lurks in unexpected corners of everyday apartment buildings. But in this unforgettable collection, translated by the acclaimed Anton Hur, Chung’s absurd, haunting universe could be our own, illuminating the ills of contemporary society.
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read by a robot
- By Anonymous User on 01-21-23
By: Bora Chung, and others
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All Adults Here
- A Novel
- By: Emma Straub
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?
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What?!
- By LoisandClark on 05-20-20
By: Emma Straub
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The Memory Police
- A Novel
- By: Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder - translator
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses - until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards.
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A Calm, Quiet Dystopian
- By Booky Nooky on 12-13-19
By: Yoko Ogawa, and others
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The Other Black Girl
- A Novel
- By: Zakiya Dalila Harris
- Narrated by: Aja Naomi King, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Heather Alicia Simms, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
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Provocative
- By TDub on 06-05-21
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Haunt Sweet Home
- By: Sarah Pinsker
- Narrated by: Jennifer Blom, Jess Nahikian, Matt Godfrey, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself.
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very fun
- By Jylene Livengood on 03-24-25
By: Sarah Pinsker
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Afterlives
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Damian Lynch
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of East Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back—until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya.
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A Compelling book in every way
- By Edward Hower on 11-03-22
What listeners say about The School for Good Mothers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Lee
- 02-18-22
Overall pretty unique perspective
I wouldn’t recommend this novel to many people, but I did enjoy another perspective on the judgement of women and particularly one whose behavior concerning parenting is less than pristine.
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- Patricia Faulkner
- 02-01-22
More of a sci-fi novel than was advertised
Story is a little too slow for my taste. It also has a sci-fi twist, when Freda reaches the school, that was not very believable. Unfortunately the storyline was not very interesting to me personally.
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- Alison Galvan
- 11-30-22
Haunting and Gripping
Only complaint is the cliffhanger it leaves on! I wanted more! I listened to this on the drive from LA to CO and was completely hooked the whole time.
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- Tamara
- 05-11-23
Engaging and scary
This highly believable story about government overreach re: correct parenting was well written and engaging. The narrator was very good. Certainly a provocative discussion starter.
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- Sean B. Kent
- 05-16-23
I thought it was great
Rich, dark, satire. In this story, any mother should be able to see the crazy things they expect themselves to be, and the even more crazy things that the world expects them to be. Impossible expectations. here they come to terms with being human and being a mother.
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- WendyH
- 06-21-22
A lot of unnecessary messaging
The book is really great especially if you love dystopian story set in close modern times. Some of these things you can actually see happening today. I would have given the book a five star review but they were so much for messaging that had literally nothing to do with the book. It was really distracting. But otherwise the story was great and I couldn’t put it down.
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- Benjamin Button
- 02-10-23
Good concept, mediocre execution, despicable main character
I have to make myself keep listening because I HATE the main character and the story is not compelling. I am hating myself for my finish every hook started self.
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- jpodboxsky
- 12-29-22
Great story
I enjoyed this book. It was a little slow, but captivating. The descriptions and detail paint a perfect picture.
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- KM3008
- 03-03-22
Dark and emotional
This was a dark book that stirred my emotions. There were quite a few moments that will stick with me for awhile, but it was a bit of a slog at times. One of those books that I didn't necessarily enjoy but felt compelled to finish.
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- Layla Alhalabi
- 08-06-22
heart breaking.
broke my heart. the ending feels incomplete. as a lawyer, I kept helping thinking all the ways this violates human rights and would never happen. but that's not the point, I know. but what is the lesson here? I don't know.
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