Jessamine Chan writes the kind of literary fiction that feels intimate, unsettling, and sharply observant all at once. Her debut novel, The School for Good Mothers, combines psychological realism with speculative pressure, using a near-future premise to examine motherhood, surveillance, race, shame, and the punishing standards placed on women.
If what you loved most was Chan’s blend of social critique, emotional intensity, and quietly dystopian unease, the authors below are excellent next reads. Some explore motherhood and family under scrutiny, others focus on gender, power, and institutional control, and several pair literary prose with eerie speculative ideas.
Margaret Atwood is one of the clearest literary touchstones for readers who admired Jessamine Chan’s ability to turn social anxieties into gripping fiction. Atwood excels at building plausible, disturbing worlds that expose how quickly institutions can weaponize morality, especially against women.
Her landmark novel The Handmaid's Tale imagines a theocratic society where women’s bodies and reproductive lives are tightly controlled. Like Chan, Atwood is less interested in spectacle than in the daily humiliations, compromises, and emotional damage produced by systems of surveillance and coercion.
Kazuo Ishiguro is an ideal recommendation for readers who responded to the quiet ache beneath Chan’s premise-driven storytelling. His novels often unfold with restraint, but beneath the calm surface are profound questions about dignity, memory, duty, and what people accept as normal.
In Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro uses a speculative framework to tell a tender, devastating story about friendship, mortality, and human worth. Fans of Chan’s emotional precision and her talent for making an unjust system feel chillingly ordinary will likely find this novel unforgettable.
Ling Ma brings a similarly incisive eye to modern alienation, conformity, and the rituals of contemporary life. Her work is especially compelling for readers who enjoyed how Chan used an exaggerated setup to reveal truths about work, performance, and social pressure.
Severance follows a young woman moving through a pandemic-stricken world while clinging to office routines and consumer habits. It is funny, eerie, and sharply critical of the systems people internalize. Like Chan, Ma understands how absurdity and dread can coexist in the same sentence.
Celeste Ng is a strong match for readers interested in the family dynamics and moral complexity in Jessamine Chan’s fiction. Ng writes with great sensitivity about parental pressure, belonging, race, and the stories families tell themselves to preserve a sense of order.
In her acclaimed novel Little Fires Everywhere, a seemingly orderly suburban community is disrupted by conflict over motherhood, class, identity, and custody. While Ng is less overtly speculative than Chan, both novelists are brilliant at exposing how social judgment infiltrates intimate domestic life.
Sophie Mackintosh writes feverish, atmospheric novels about bodily autonomy, patriarchal fear, and the strange rules women are taught to live by. If you were drawn to the oppressive emotional environment in Chan’s work, Mackintosh offers a similarly unsettling intensity.
The Water Cure centers on sisters raised in isolation by parents who insist the outside world, especially men, is dangerous and contaminating. The novel is dreamlike and symbolic, but its core concerns—control, protection, obedience, and fear—will resonate with readers interested in Chan’s critique of how society disciplines women in the name of care.
Leni Zumas is a particularly good fit for readers who want more fiction about reproductive politics, state power, and the emotional consequences of public policy. Her writing is intelligent, inventive, and deeply attentive to the lived experience behind political debate.
In Red Clocks, Zumas imagines a near-future America where abortion has been outlawed and reproductive freedoms are rapidly shrinking. The novel follows multiple women whose lives are shaped by that shift, creating a layered portrait of autonomy, longing, and social punishment. Like Chan, Zumas makes institutional cruelty feel personal and immediate.
Christina Dalcher leans more toward accessible dystopian suspense, but she shares with Jessamine Chan an interest in how gendered control is enforced through policy, stigma, and everyday compliance. Her novels tend to move quickly while still engaging with serious social questions.
Her bestselling novel Vox imagines an America where women are restricted to speaking only one hundred words a day. The premise is stark and high-concept, but the novel’s deeper focus is on silence, power, and the erosion of personhood. Readers who liked Chan’s critique of institutional overreach may appreciate Dalcher’s direct, urgent approach.
Rumaan Alam is a smart recommendation for readers who enjoyed the social tension and psychological discomfort in Jessamine Chan’s work. His fiction often examines privilege, family vulnerability, and the fragility of middle-class stability, especially when a crisis exposes what people cannot control.
In Leave the World Behind, two families are thrown together as an inexplicable catastrophe unfolds beyond the walls of a vacation home. Alam excels at sustained unease, ambiguous threat, and precise observation of human behavior under stress—qualities that overlap nicely with Chan’s tension-filled storytelling.
Megan Hunter will appeal to readers who were especially moved by Chan’s portrayal of motherhood under extreme pressure. Hunter’s prose is lyrical and compressed, and she has a gift for placing intimate maternal experience against a backdrop of broader social collapse.
The End We Start From follows a new mother trying to protect her infant as catastrophic flooding transforms everyday life into a survival landscape. Though stylistically quite different from Chan, Hunter shares her interest in vulnerability, caregiving, and the way crises intensify already-existing expectations placed on mothers.
Jenny Offill is a great choice for readers who appreciated Chan’s intelligence, emotional sharpness, and ability to capture ambient anxiety. Offill often writes in fragments, building meaning through observation, wit, and flashes of dread rather than conventional plot-heavy momentum.
Weather follows a woman absorbing personal chaos and planetary fear at the same time, from family instability to climate anxiety. Offill’s voice is dry, humane, and acutely tuned to modern overstimulation, making her a strong next step for readers drawn to literary fiction that channels cultural unease.
Diane Cook writes fiction that is both primal and socially perceptive, often placing characters in environments that expose the pressures of civilization, parenthood, and survival. Readers who liked Jessamine Chan’s mix of emotional realism and destabilizing premise may find Cook especially rewarding.
Her novel The New Wilderness imagines a future in which environmental devastation has narrowed human options so drastically that a mother and daughter join an experimental survival community. Cook explores maternal devotion, adaptation, and the cost of trying to remain human within brutal systems. The result is tense, thought-provoking, and morally complicated.
Fans of Chan’s interest in caregiving under scrutiny will likely appreciate the way Cook tests her characters without flattening them into symbols.
P. D. James may seem like an unexpected inclusion, but she is a compelling one for readers who valued the serious social imagination behind Jessamine Chan’s fiction. James brings intellectual rigor, moral seriousness, and a strong sense of institutional critique to her work.
Her novel The Children of Men is set in a world facing mass infertility, where social order has curdled into despair and authoritarian control. Though its focus differs from Chan’s, it similarly asks what happens when reproductive anxiety becomes a public obsession and political tool.
If you’re interested in literary dystopia that thinks carefully about power, responsibility, and the social meaning of children, James is well worth reading.
Megha Majumdar is an excellent choice for readers who admired how Jessamine Chan places individuals inside systems that judge, punish, and misread them. Majumdar writes with urgency and clarity about class, ambition, media narratives, and the terrifying speed with which a life can be derailed.
In A Burning, a single social media post sets off a chain of events that entangles several people in contemporary India’s political and social machinery. The novel is not speculative, but it shares with Chan a deep interest in institutional indifference, public shaming, and how vulnerable people are assessed by forces far larger than themselves.
Readers who like fiction that is both personal and systemic should find Majumdar especially compelling.
Kim Fu is a strong pick for readers who enjoy literary fiction with a subtle speculative edge and a strong grasp of emotional isolation. Her writing often explores technology, estrangement, identity, and the surreal textures of modern life without losing sight of character.
Her story collection Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century brings together inventive scenarios with deeply recognizable human fears—loneliness, disconnection, insecurity, and the desire to be seen. Like Chan, Fu is skilled at using unusual premises to illuminate familiar emotional terrain rather than overshadow it.
If you want more fiction that feels contemporary, strange, and psychologically acute, Fu is an excellent choice.
Sheila Heti is a natural recommendation for readers most interested in the motherhood question at the heart of Jessamine Chan’s work. Heti is less dystopian and more philosophical, but she writes with unusual candor about womanhood, cultural expectation, ambivalence, and the pressure to build a meaningful life according to prescribed scripts.
Her novel Motherhood examines whether to have children through a voice that is probing, funny, uncertain, and unsparingly self-aware. Rather than presenting motherhood as a fixed ideal, Heti treats it as a subject entangled with art, identity, aging, freedom, and social pressure.
Readers who appreciated Chan’s willingness to interrogate maternal expectation—not just depict it—will likely find Heti’s work especially resonant.
