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 On the rare occasions when Frida's phone privileges aren't rescinded and she is able to connect with Harriet, Gust and Susanna, the calls are fraught.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.

The Umbrella Academy (the television series)

When the surviving children of Reginald Hargreeves reunite for his funeral they discover that the apocalypse is nigh. While attempting to save the world they discover secrets that threaten much more than family unity.

Beyond binge-worthy, this dark comedy series begs to be binged. Keeping track of the multitude of characters, each with their own dysfunction, superpower, and history is enough reason to watch this without breaking. Throw in some time travel and flashbacks and it becomes an absolute necessity.

While it is made clear that scenes that take place in the present day do indeed transpire in 2019, it is a parallel world of 2019 than the one viewers know. It is a world with no cell phones; one in which our superheroes must use their wired house phone, or find a pay telephone when not at home, in order to communicate with one another when they are not together. It is likewise a world without Google. A world in which if one wants to find out about their sister's new suitor, for instance, one would have to go to the public library and use the newspaper on microfiche to find out more about him. An excellent use of library resources. There is one other scene over the 10 episodes that takes place in the public library, one in which a couple of judgmental librarians wonder where the parents of the drunk teenager are.

A wonderful cast and a good story with some truly unexpected twists and surprises.

The Heart Goes Last - by Margaret Atwood

Like Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale this is a brilliant piece of dystopian literature. The Heart Goes Last, however, is a bit lighter and more satirical. It tells the story of Stan and Charmaine who are living in their car until they find out about the Positron Project - an experimental community in which residents spend every other month living in prison, while their "alternates" live in their houses. There is no unemployment, and the "prisoners" are treated well and provided with good food. Stan and Charmaine start out adjusting to the life, and are glad to have a nice home for six months out of the year, but when Stan discovers that Charmaine is having an affair it sets off a chain of events that neither of them could have ever expected involving a plethora of Elvis impersonators, a knitted-blue-bear fetish, and chilling Stepford-esque experimentation.

Even dystopias have libraries. Positron has one but apparently it's picking are slim. During one of her trysts Charmaine and her paramour, Max, are so swept up in the passion we learn that

he couldn't wait, and because he couldn't neither could she. It was like the copy on the back of the most lurid novel in the limited-titles library at Positron. Swept away. Drugged with desire. Like a cyclone. Helpless moaning. All of that. She'd never known about such a force, such an energy inside herself. She'd thought it was only in books and TV, or else for other people.

Of course this one reference to the library had me questioning what kinds of books were being withheld from the good citizens of Positron. Clearly bodice-ripping sex was in, so what was out? We are left to ponder, as this was the only instance in which the library was mentioned.

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.