Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel

I loved this book. It engaged me throughout and I hated to put it down. It is a comedy of manners, a parody of political correctness, a satire of the computer world of Microsoft and a laugh-out-loud look at Seattle. It is a wonder of a book and I can't say enough positive things about it. It is about Bernadette Branch, a Macarther Fellow in the past, her husband Elgie, a Microsoft Guru, and their daughter Bee, fifteen going on forty. Bernadette won her award for architecture but now her family lives in a former children's prison that is falling apart. Blackberry brambles are growing through the floor, there are rooms closed off because the floors are all mud and it is a general third world residence. The Branches, by the way, are quite rich so this is a true paradox. At one time Bernadette hoped to fix the place up but her plans never came to fruition. Bee goes to Galer School, a private school, and Bernadette hates the mothers of the children there. She calls them 'gnats'. She and Audrey, the mother of a psychopathic son, are especially at war. When one of Bernadette and Audrey's conflicts ends up in a tragedy worse than they had anticipated, everything escalates. Bee has been getting straight A's and she was told she could have anything she wanted if she finished middle school with perfect grades. She wants a trip to Antarctica and so the family plans this. Additionally, she has been accepted to Choate, an elite boarding school in the northeast. Bernadette had a terrible experience with her architecture in L.A. which caused the family to move to Seattle. Since then she has not done anything professional. She avoids people and, most of the time, lives in her airstream trailer which is on their property. Elgie is hardly ever home. He is a guru at Microsoft and a legend in the computer world, Bernadette is different but is she crazy? Bee doesn't think so. Her mother is her best friend. The gnats hate her and think she has a screw loose. You will have to read this book yourself to decide. It is an amazing feat of writing, composed of narrative, emails, faxes, and documents. All of these are composed in a way that tell the story of what leads to Bernadette's disappearance. This is one of the best books I've read this year and a unique and wonderful reading experience. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

At first, i wasn't so sure that I would be able to finish Marie Semple's novel "Where'd You Go, Bernadette". The style of storytelling, through letters/emails/short chapters, was a bit confusing. I felt like the narration was inconsistent. It turns out that the narration was told through the eyes of Bernadette's teenage daughter as she is trying to piece together the mystery of the disappearance of her mother occurring just days prior to a planned family vacation to the arctic. I think what bothered me in the beginning, was although it was supposed to be told through Bee's (the daughters) eyes, Bee seemed to have access to an awful lot of information that she could not possibly know, like emails between the dean at her school and other parents. It seemed implausible. It was eventually explained, but I am not sure that I buy into the explanation. However, within the first fifty pages of the book, I forgave it's short comings. because it was such a fun read. Semple has created vibrate characters and has given them sharp, witty dialogue. She places them in hilarious scenarios and gives them clear motives. The book has so much that is overwhelmingly entertaining, that I can overlook the bits that don't seem to gel. At the heart of the story is the mystery of Bernadette. It's not really so much about her disappearance, but that Bernadette as a person is a mystery. Semple does a great job at dropping little hints about Bernadette all the way through her novel and when I finally had a clear picture of the character it made the whole story come full circle. I love the pacing and the reveal. Semple does a great job at making the places in the story, such as Seattle, their own characters. Seattle, Bee's private prep school and the family home are all as colorful and important as the people in the novel. Places are very specific and important to the core of this story. It's not a story that could happen just anywhere and I love how it's rooted. Although heartwarming and dealing with some very serious issues, Semple's story is ultimately highly entertaining. It's wickedly funny and I laughed out loud many times. Great read. Please check out my blog for more reviews and musings!

"Where'd You Go Bernadette" is a very stealthy book of ideas and insights, wrapped in a delectable froth of humor, nonsense, mystery and suspense. Tucked into that enviable combination is a moving story of unconditional love between parent and child, and a surprisingly sure and intimate portrait of what it looks and feels like when someone loses touch with their central identity. All in a book that you could cheerfuly knock back as easy beach reading. A truly terrific book. So many others here have already described the plot better than a back cover summary could do, so I won't duplicate their efforts but will just skip to my reactions to the writing and the story. It took me a while to decide whether Bernadette Fox was a contemptible, self-absorbed elitist with epic anger management issues, or my new hero. By the end of the book (okay, midway) I'd concluded she's probably not quite either, but I was leaning very heavily toward the latter. I started out feeling a teensy bit defensive and offended, and trying to figure whether I was supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy in Bernadette's world. Then I decided I didn't care, and enjoyed the ride. As a parent who once very deliberately chose a "Subaru school" over a "Mercedes school" (as the socially insecure fundraisers for Bernadette's daughter, Bee's, private school characterize them ), I found myself alternately bristling at and howling with empathic glee over Semple and Bernadette's scorn for the ideas of community, and the more mindless examples of PCism and the more judgmental forms of ersatz earth-motherhood. Even in the clutches of what turns out to have been a long, slow free-fall of existential crisis, depression, anxiety, neuroses and agoraphobia, reclusive Bernadette is smarter, braver, more creative, more honest, more demanding of integrity, more nurturing, funnier and MUCH more fun than any of the other moms at school. She also has a distinctly individualistic and social Darwinist world view that is not always compassionate (a term Bernadette scorns, apparently confusing it with weakness, fuzzy-headednes or pandering) or altogether likeable (especially in her crazier, more bitterly misanthropic moments, even if these are very funny), but for the most part it's highly principled and very frequently right on. Agree or disagree with Bernadette, love her or loathe her, if she doesnt make you stop and think, you've missed something. Sample's and Bernadette's championship of traditional education, hard and fast objective standards, self-reliance, individual creativity and the radical idea that it is legitimate to treat extraordinarily talented contributors to society (or a company) as superior to those of mediocre ability will ring a bell with those who have read Aym Rand's "The Fountainhead," and presumably it's no coincidence that Bernadette is an iconoclastic architect. Fortunately for all of us, Bernadette is more three-dimensionally human, more vulnerable, mouthier and infinitely more fun than Howard Roarke. Unfortunately for her, she's even less suited to live in a world that contains other people than Roarke is. When Bernadette's overly withdrawn and idiosyncratic world collides disasterously with the busy-body, run of the mill, overly interventionist world around her, something has to go -- and it turns out to be Bernadette. This epistolary style book is a crazy, outsized, hilarious romp composed of emails between snooty and self-deluded mothers at the private school, said mothers and "blackberry abatement specialists," Bernadette and the India-based e-personal assistant that she has hired for 75 cents per hour to make her dentist appointments, old newspaper stories, excerpts from a TEDTalk by Bernadette's software rockstar husband, police reports, ship's logs, school news bulletins, parent communications from a PTSD specialist, FBI profiles, hospital bills, apocalyptic weather reports; you name it, all tied together with interpolations by Bernadette's very poised 14 year old daughter, Bee. Bee is probably the only reliable narrator in the book, and she's a lovely creation: smart, motivated, aware, with a highly developed BS meter, but warm, enthusiastic, full of goofy inside jokes, and open to wonder, surprise and pain despite her maturity. Bee is at once a matter of fact, irreverent and deeply sympathetic guide through the events that lead to her mother's disappearance. Ultimately it is the laser -like focus of mother and daughter on each other that propels the story, and gives coherence to Bernadette's seemingly fractured character. Even when you don't know whether or not you should be pulling for Bernadette, you know you are pulling for Bee -- which is perhaps what makes this otherwise philosophically complex book an easy, straight- forward read that you won't want to put down.

I can't remember exactly where I heard about this book, but after reading through all the praise and accolade it received as well as the description of the story, I was desperate to get my hands on a copy. I ordered through Amazon and much to my dismay, shipping seemed to take forever. Needless to say when the book finally arrived, I dove right in. I was expecting humor, wit, charm, with all the laugh-out-loud moments you'd expect from a comedy mixed with all the light-hearted that-could-never-really-happen-but-somehow-I-now-believe-it-could charm I've grown to love and expect from all my favorite romantic comedies. The cover was cute and I was definitely all in. The first ten pages (or so it seemed) were filled with witty quotes and glowing reviews from pretty much everyone in the industry. The book started on a high note. The story was intriguing. There were some ridiculous moments that were definitely humorous, but I think you would be ill-informed to assume you were picking up a comedy in this book. The tone is light-hearted, which almost disguises the premise, which I would consider to be kind of depressing. I couldn't put the book down, but I think that was more because I was waiting for it to get amazing and not because I loved it and wanted more, more, more. When ordering this book, I fully intended to gush about it and lend it to all my friends and family. I kept reading on, waiting for the moment when this book went from okay to amazing and hilarious. Unfortunately, even as I turned the last page, I hadn't reached that point. The story is interesting, it definitely has promise. There are some parts that seemed long-winded and quite confusing. (Maybe I'll have to take a trip to Seattle before I can understand?) As I mentioned before the book has some segues into depressing territory, showcasing the fragility of relationships between family and friends and strangers and how quickly they can unravel. And, unrealistically, how they can knit themselves back together instantly with, for example, a life-changing adventure into uncharted waters. I don't know how else to categorize this type of not-tragic-but-still-sad literature but as "coming-of-age." (Whatever that means.) But all the books and movies in that category have the same human reality - the good, the bad, the ugly. I always associate 500 Days of Summer and The Perks of Being a Wallflower with the "coming-of-age" genre. Overall, I think I expected too much from this book, so I was probably doomed before I started reading. I am baffled by all the press and comments about how funny the story is. Of course it has its moments, but I was hardly "laughing-out-loud." Even after all my over-analyzing (or maybe under-analyzing?), it might be more beneficial to condense this review to just one word that I feel describes this book the most accurately... Meh.

Book Review - Where'd You Go Bernadette By Maria Semple Book Review - Where'd You Go Bernadette By Maria Semple Where'd You Go, Bernadette has been extensively reviewed by dozens of book critics for newspapers and magazines, as well as almost 1200 readers and others on Amazon. In characterizing the book, reviewers and critics have described it as, "utterly delightful, inventive, quirky, fresh, smart, intelligent, zany, witty, comic satire, and crazy." My favorite descriptions include adverbs such as divinely, achingly, outrageously, scathingly, charmingly, and wickedly FUNNY. Yes, the author, Maria Semple, is a creative and gifted writer, but I didn't find this book all that funny. This book uses emails, letters, faxes, bills, reports, and almost any form of written information and/or communication to develop the plot and move the story forward. I admit, I read the first section rather casually. Later, when I picked up my Kindle to continue, I had to read the whole section again as I was unable to place all the characters. The problem with this style of narrative is that the emails, letters, etc. have the same voice (the author's) despite (in the book) being written by different characters. It's hard for an author to write letters to a daughter from her mother or emails between friends and be able to define their personalities in a different narrative voice. All sound like the same person. And, as I read most of the lengthy correspondence, it struck me as "stream of consciousness writing"―meaning anything that comes to mind (I call it ranting and raving about unconnected things). Semple obviously has a talent for writing this way with wit and sarcasm, although stream of consciousness can get tedious. The main characters are Bernadette and Elgin Branch and their 14-15 year old daughter, Bee―named Balakrishna at birth by her mother. The setting is Seattle where Microsoft rules. Despite the community of geniuses and money, Bernadette believes it is a city of nerds and other mostly stupid and small-minded people. Twenty years ago Bernadette won the MacArthur genius award for architecture when she designed and built a house in Los Angeles called the Twenty-Mile House using only the materials that could be found no more than twenty miles from the building site. After it was completed and sold she was traumatized by what happened to it. Now, she hates living in Seattle and has pretty much withdrawn from life. Luckily she hires a person in India, Manjula Kapoor, for 75 cents an hour, to take care of everything for her via email. However, a virtual person is not always what they seem. Bernadette's behavior gets so strange that either she has Asberger's syndrome (my diagnosis) or is believed to be mentally unstable. Elgin is also extremely gifted and engrossed in his work as a VP for Microsoft. While living in Los Angeles, his computer animation company was bought by Microsoft and they moved to Seattle. Elgin's company is the highest priority at Microsoft and he is "team leader" to 250 employees working on a project called Samantha 2. His new admin, Soo-Lin Lee-Segal, is a single, divorced mother with two children in the same school as Bee. She participates in a Victims Against Victimhood group that she writes about in her emails. Bee was born with a heart defect that required several years of treatment and many operations when she was a baby. Bernadette stayed with her at the hospital during all that time. Now, Bee is an eighth grader at the private Galer Street School where she is an all A student. She also scores high in "grit and poise" according to school tests. She is smart, fun, and understanding of all her mother's quirks and antics. When her mother disappears, Bee is convinced Bernadette will be found as she knows her mother would not permanently leave her. Other correspondents in the story include Audrey Griffin, a close neighbor, and the mother of a boy in Bee's class at Galer. Audrey and Soo-Lin (Elgin's admin) are friends. Their emails and other actions involve events that affect the whole Branch family. The trip to Antarctica is the most interesting and also painful part of the story. Bee chose the trip because they were studying it in school. It was her reward for getting all A's. The descriptions of the water, the icebergs, the land, the cold weather, the whales, seals and penguins are great. It is the trip that concludes the story, but the ending is unknown. Why do current authors leave their readers with so many unanswered questions? I guess It's like writing a book review; they don't want to reveal too much information, or maybe they just don't know.

Chick lit plots and characters are like so many cut-out cookies, after a while. You've got the caterpillar career girl, the stuck-up (but oh-so-handsome) object of her affections. The mishaps. Enter heart-of-gold True Love to sweep her off her feet. The same can be said of YA fiction, except you substitute "misfit" for "career" and thrown in some parent angst and maybe a little bullying. Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette defies both categories. It could be chick lit, could be YA--but what I'm certain of is that the story is inventive and anything but lacking in fun. The New York Times called it "divinely funny"; John Green, "A moving, smart page-turner."where'd you go Bernadette Bernadette, an LA transplant living in Seattle, was once America's girl-architect phenom. Now she's all but agoraphobic, living in an historic home for wayward girls she's tried to thought about making into a home for her family. Bernadette has been hiding from the world for twenty years and thinks she likes it that way. (Her feuds with the stay-at-home moms at her daughter's exclusive school and her visceral dislike of all things Seattle might lead the reader to come to another conclusion about her happiness, however.) Daughter Bee was dearly conceived and barely survived a life-threatening heart defect at birth; her first few years were touch and go. Bee is a gifted young woman with a heart of gold and a wit that's sharp; she has soared through her first eight years of school and is on her way to Choate. Dad and husband Elgin Fox is a whiz at Microsoft and rarely at home. There is conflict aplenty in Where'd you go. A battle royale with a neighbor--actually make that two neighbors; Bernadette has issues with people. An admin (that's an administrative assistant in Microsoft speak) who's also a home-wrecker. A house that has boarded off rooms and blackberry vines growing up through the floorboards. Top it all off with a trip to Antarctica that no one in the family really wants to take except Bee. Oh, and did I mention Bernadette that does her shopping and appointment making via a virtual assistant from Delhi, India named Manjula? Now these unconventional characters were dealing with some pretty serious matters and when Bernadette disappears (that's the where'd you go part) I was a bit worried that the novel would take a U-turn and end up in A Lesson For Modern Times territory. But no worries. It's madcap. It's zany. And you'll smile the whole way through this read, I guarantee.

Born to bright parents, after many miscarriages, Bee is the daughter of Elgin Branch and Bernadette Fox. Elgin is a Microsoft guru and Bernadette was a world-famous architect. To say Bernadette is quirky is an understatement. She changes with the wind with one exception. She loves her daughter, Bee, who has survived many heart surgeries and has become an independent thinker who collected the best of her parents' intellectual genes. She is a problem solver, intuitive, a loner and really doesn't care what anyone else thinks, which is quite unusual for a 15 year old girl. Stuck in Seattle, Bernadette does not adapt to the city or the social-climbing parents of her daughter's school. She is the antithesis of the private school moms and probably the most opinionated partner to Elgin. Bernadette has a pioneer spirit mixed with genius ideas which sets her apart, negatively, from the society she now inhabits. The neighbors believe she is crazy, she lives in a home that is barely habitable but she is the most wonderful mother - and then she disappears. There is a hilarious intervention to commit Bernadette to a private mental hospital and so she escapes. Bee's quest to find her mother opens up into a heart stopping satire and one of the most original books I have read in a long time. Maria Semple did a marvelous job, she did not insult the reader and presented me with ingenious characters in a tightly plotted novel. Semple is so smart; I just wonder why she would approve the inane cover for her book. The novel offers brilliant satire and should have a cover on a higher plane, rather than one that looks like chick lit.

So I started reading this book because a friend emailed me to say, "with all love and humor", that I AM the main character, Bernadette. Well, how could I not check out this book, right? Anyway, I'm not sure I'm EXACTLY like this person (definitely not the semi-suicidal, agoraphobic, nut job part of her--I hope!) but the blunt, NY/LA, non-conforming, intelligent, creative chick? Yeah, I'll identify with that, sure! lol Here we find Bernadette, wife to computer genius Elgie and mom to 13yo, perfect-child Bee. She is living in Seattle and avoiding--at all costs--what she sees as the "mediocrity" of her life in this city that may as well be Canada for all its bland niceness. Once a promising architect, how Bernadette ended up far from her LA architectural triumphs in a mouldering house in Seattle is a mystery. Slowly, we discover the truth as events unfold like a prequel to what has already happened--Bernadette has disappeared and her daughter has decided to find her. Bernadette's story is told in the past, present and future via emails, letters, articles and action in real life. It's slightly disjointed at first, and there were times when I had to stop for a moment and figure out who was speaking. But at least, it was never boring. The best parts of the story IMO were not the main characters but the nutso side characters--the raving, scheming, hyper-involved school parent, and the ridiculous new admin at Elgie's work, as well as a few others. Much of what happened to Bernadette, and her reactions, seemed almost logical to me in comparison--maybe why my friend thinks I am Bernadette, personified. I also enjoyed all the Microsoft intrigue and secretive, corporate ridiculousness--of which I am sure at least 75% is true. I didn't expect the ending--mostly because it didn't really track with the character and was too easy, IMO. It was interesting to hear about Antarctica (assuming everything here is accurate.) This is almost a love story, if an unconventional one, between two people who lost themselves and then each other. I did enjoy it (despite my friend's implication I resemble an agoraphobic!) and despite the fact that it was jarring for me as a parent to read about a mother who disappears, for whatever reason. Although it was a quick read, for me it wasn't a page-turner. Would I recommend it? I would. Would I read it again? Probably not. Would I read more by this author? Yes.

Bernadette's handwriting letter for Bee (final) made me cry. Bernadette & Bee might represent the author's experience. So each character is vivid in description ( Email, Document, and Report.. etc) )as if they were actually existing. It might be magnificent adventure for the family that involved destruction and recreation. Bee was hurt. But she could be stronger in Antarctica going through her adventure to search her selfish mother. Highly recommended.

I loved it! Bernadette is witty and eccentric and absolutely fabulous! And I loved the part on the South Pole.

Read it!

Loved this sweet book and the delightful characters in it. Although a fairly light read, I stumbled across half a dozen words I had to look up. An intelligently written book that will make you laugh out loud.

Eu estou apaixonada por esse livro, me identifiquei muito com a bernadette fox, e estou muito ansiosa pro filme que vai ter a cate blanchett