The Overgrown Footpath

My Recent Reads and Various Wanderings

Page 6 of 19

Bad Mothers, Good Patients: A Review of Jessamine Chan’s The School For Good Mothers

“I am a bad mother, but I’m learning to be good.”

This is the mantra that Frida and her fellow moms must recite as they enter a yearlong program that will determine the status of their parental rights. During a “very bad day” in which she leaves her daughter, Harriet, alone for two hours, Frida is reported by her neighbors and finds herself swept away from motherhood by a “new and improved,” hyper-surveillant Child Protective Services program.… Continue reading

God’s Green Earth or Humanity’s Hellscape? A Review of Matt Bell’s Appleseed

In his genre-bending novel Appleseed, Matt Bell offers an ambitious take on the horror of a climate doomed past the point of saving. As he lays out three storylines that transcend the traditionally distinct categorizations of fantasy, fable, sci-fi, and climate fiction, readers are invited into a world whose slow destruction by forces of human greed and exploitation is painfully familiar.… Continue reading

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