The School for Good Mothers - by Jessamine Chan

 

Bringing together ideas from The Stepford Wives, The Handmaid's Tale, and the movie A.I. Jessamine Chan finds a new way to scare the bejesus out of all of us.

Frida Liu is a single mother trying to co-parent her toddler (Harriet) as best she can with her ex-husband (Gust) and his live-in girlfriend (Susanna). During the Labor Day weekend Frida is unable to console the eighteen-month-old who is suffering from an ear infection. Neither is able to get much sleep over the three days. Frida, at her wit's end, leaves the house, and her daughter unattended, for two hours. The police are called when the neighbors hear the baby's incessant crying. After several months of invasive monitoring, and limited supervised visits with her daughter, Frida is sent to a facility where she can be rehabilitated as a mother. The year-long stay involves learning to parent with a creepy robot surrogate for her daughter, on a defunct university campus.

Mentions of libraries are infrequent and tend to be nefarious in nature. Frida is told not to do research at the library prior to her court hearing, lest she be monitored; the former music and dance library on the prison campus is empty; one mother is being rehabilitated for having allowed her eight-year-old to walk home from the  local library alone (a four-block distance). Frida gets one 10-minute video visit with Harriet a week which take place in the former campus library. Even these become depressing events. On the rare occasions when Frida's phone privileges aren't rescinded and she is able to connect with Harriet, Gust and Susanna, the calls are fraught.

A truly chilling tale for the twenty-first century.

Robot & Frank (the movie)

This was kind of a sweet little movie. Frank Langella plays Frank, an aging ex-con who is experiencing the early stages of dementia. His children arrange for a Robot to come and help him maintain his house, plant a garden, and cook his food. However, Frank discovers another benefit to having a Robot:  teaching the Robot to do breaking and entering helps Frank to sharpen his failing mind. Robot and Frank target the Public Library, as well as the home of the new Public Library Director, Jake (Jeremy Stong), a young whippersnapper who wants to remove all the books and have them digitized. Susan Sarandon plays the old-school librarian who still appreciates printed books.

The Stepford Wives-by Ira Levin

You can't have a perfect town, if it doesn't have a library, and perfect Stepford has one. It is mentioned over a dozen times in this slim novel. The children go on outings there, and newcomer Joanna Eberhardt uses it as a subject of some of her photographs. Joanna also understands it is the place to go to look up information. In the days before the internet you could find out which government agency might have the authority to find out if there was something poisoning the air or water of your town, and get its address. But more importantly it is where Joanna finds all the back issues of the town newspaper and reads the "Notes on Newcomers" pages to find out where all of her neighbors had lived and worked before coming to Stepford. In the dimly-lit cellar where the archives are held, she makes all the right connections in determining that the wives in Stepford are turned, literally, into cleaning machines by the Men's Association.

There is a librarian in this book, Miss Asturian. We can gather from her title that she is unmarried. She is also described as "plump," and as I was reading I assumed these things meant she was not a robot, but now I'm not sure. She certainly seemed oblivious, and was overly concerned with things being put back in proper order, and making sure the lights weren't left on. There was no orgasmic "OMG" when she learns that a popular children's author is the new patron she is helping. A real librarian would have been beside herself. I guess it would make sense that the men would turn the single women into robots, too. Wouldn't want anyone to let the cat out of the bag.