“Where’d You Go, Bernadette” by Maria Semple is a light, funny read with a deeper message about the strong ties of family love.
Here’s the synopsis: When fifteen-year-old Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, her fiercely intelligent but agoraphobic mother, Bernadette, throws herself into preparations for the trip. Worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Bernadette is on the brink of a meltdown. As disaster follows disaster, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces. Which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together emails, invoices, and school memos to reveal the secret past that Bernadette has been hiding for decades. “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” is an ingeniously entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are, and the power of a daughter’s love for her imperfect mother.
My review: This book is written as a compilation of communications between the characters, as pieced together by Bee, the protagonist’s daughter. At first, the sheer number of characters makes it difficult to keep up with who’s who, and I almost stopped reading for this reason (it’s not that I have a short attention span – haha – it’s just that I started reading this in shorter bouts and would forget the characters between sessions). Once I gained momentum, though, I found I loved the quirky characters! The story is a little far-fetched, but in a charming way.
The protagonist, architect Bernadette, doesn’t love Seattle, where she and her family have moved in part for her husband to work at Microsoft.
Here’s an excerpt, from a letter she writes to a friend: “So here we are in Seattle. First off, whoever laid out this city never met a four-way intersection they didn’t turn into a five-way intersection. They never met a two-way street they didn’t suddenly and for no reason turn into a one-way street. They never met a beautiful view they didn’t block with a twenty-story old folks home with zero architectural integrity. Wait. I think that’s the first time the words ‘architectural’ and ‘integrity’ have ever been used together in a discussion of Seattle. The drivers here are horrible. And by horrible I mean they don’t realize I have someplace to be. They’re the slowest drivers you ever saw. If someone is at a five-way stoplight, and growing old while they’re waiting for the lights to cycle through, and finally, finally it’s time to go, you know what they do? They start, then put on their brakes in the middle of the intersection. You’re hoping they lost a half a sandwich under their seat and are digging for it, but no. They’re just slowing down because, hey, it is an intersection.”
Ms. Semple’s writing is astute and descriptive. She’s great at throwing in unexpected details that make it interesting!
Bottom line: Read it! Although I struggled to keep up with all the characters in the first part of the book, I soon fell in love with them. The story had a good pace and sweet theme.