Where'd You Go, Bernadette

by Maria Semple

A misanthropic matriarch leaves her eccentric family in crisis when she mysteriously disappears in this "whip-smart and divinely funny" novel that inspired the movie starring Cate Blanchett (New York Times).

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect; and to 15-year-old Bee, she is her best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette vanishes. It all began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle -- and people in general -- has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, and secret correspondence -- creating a compulsively readable and surprisingly touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.

• ISBN10: 0316204277
• ISBN13: 9780316204279
• Publish Date: 14 August 2012 (first published 1 January 2012)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little, Brown & Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[layawaydragon]

After a recent win with reading a book again, I borrowed this from the library. Given it's told in emails and documents, I knew audiobook wouldn't work for me.

I finished it. I mostly liked it. I didn't find it as funny as everyone keeps saying it is. Nor insightful. Maybe it didn't age well?

The victimization group really bugged me. It seems to work for a moment and then ridiculousness struck again. It just...rude and unfunny.

The ending came like all is well again, but hardly! There's now a baby in the mix! The aftermath! And the legalities of going missing and the media and the true crime journalists and fans and...it's just bullshit!

If these people were poor or non-white, they'd be trashy and gross instead of funny and insightful. Like Bridget Jones's Baby, FFS.

I haven't seen this movie and I was initally interested to see how they'd make it work with the format. Then I finished the book. In a rare case, I'd be willing to see movie Bernadette if they gave a fulfilling ending. Doesn't seem like the case from what I've found so, nevermind.

[Bianca]

2019 Popsugar Reading Challenge
01. A book becoming a movie in 2019

The truth is complicated. There’s no way one person can ever know everything about another person.

— Funny and pretty enjoyable. Just not something I would really love.

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

This books gets an awful lot of hype. I’ve had it on hold for the audiobook at the library for almost a year, so I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people are still reading it. I was excited when this finally became available because I was dying to see what all the hype was about.

I gotta be honest, I didn’t love it?

There were moments that is was alright. I actually didn’t mind Bernadette as a character, and I thought some of her correspondences were interesting. I particularly liked the email from Bernadette to her old professor. But a lot of the rest of the stuff got me really frustrated. I’m one of those readers who doesn’t love too much drama in her books? There were scenes where characters were just angrily going off on on another which I actually found a little stressful.

So all that said – the stuff I didn’t like isn’t the type of thing that will bother most people. The characters are varied and interesting, with secrets and layers and twists in their personalities. Audrey Griffin was a bit of an unexpected character in the mix, and I ended up liking her a little bit more at the end, even though she infuriated me at the beginning. The family dynamic here – in all the families presented – was very messy and uncomfortable, and all the relationships a bit rocky. The characters kept me listening more than anything else, because you needed to know what fresh hell they were going to create next.

This book is written as a narrative by Bea, Bernadette’s daughter, and is intertwined with a bunch of letters, emails, invoices, and other paperwork that she uses as a trail to try and find her mother. The result of her doing this is a bit academically catastrophic for Bea, but it tells a good story and isn’t too interrupting. You get the impression early on that a lot of the voices coming and going will be one-offs, so it’s not too difficult to remember the real who’s who. Additionally, if you’re an audiobook person, I felt that Kathleen Wilhoite did an excellent job in her reading.

And then, after all that, I have to confess: it was a masterful ending. Most of the book felt like a complete mess, but I adored the final chapter.

The setting is immersive and the plot was a page-turner. While I didn’t fall in love with this book the way so many other people did, I can see why it’s so popular, and it’s definitely worth a read. And for those who don’t already know, there’s a film slated for early 2019 starring Cate Blanchette (who I love) so read it now before the movie comes out!

[ktshpd]

Clever & delightful.

[gmcgregor]

To start off, I think it's important to know that the author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple, previously wrote for Arrested Development. In Bernadette, she uses the same kind of absurdist humor lens to tell the story of Bernadette Fox, a deeply unhappy wife and mother living in Seattle with her Microsoft-rockstar husband, Elgin Branch, and their daughter, fiercely intelligent and independent Bee. Bee was promised whatever she wanted if she achieved perfect grades at her private school, and she claims as her prize a family trip to Antarctica.

This is a problem for Berndadette, whose anxiety and depression has manifested as intense agoraphobia. In an effort to make her daughter happy, though, she engages an Indian virtual assistant to help her both prepare for, and as the trip grows nearer and her fear of it grows, avoid the trip. Her decompensation, including a feud with the busybody mother of one of Bee's classmates, finally breaks through her husband's workaholic fog and he prepares an intervention to confront her, from which she escapes, prompting Bee's search for her (and the title, of course).

It's a satire of the original tech bubble scene, Seattle, complete with a prep school consultant engaged to attract the "Mercedes parents" to the school, a self-help group called "Victims Against Victimhood", and Elgin's status as a TED talk celebrity. And I know a lot of people who loved this book and found it outrageously funny. But the central family story is where it failed hard for me. I think we're supposed to be giggling at Bernadette's "antics" and her clueless husband's attempts to "deal with" them. But all I saw was a story about a tightly wound woman whose deepening unhappiness with the environment in which she found herself should have long since been noticed by her husband and dealt with as a family. Instead, he's spent years ignoring her worsening problems to bask in workplace glory and develops an inappropriate relationship with his secretary, who he tries to bring to his wife's mental health intervention? What? This is supposed to be funny?

Then again, Arrested Development on paper would probably rub me all wrong, too. After finishing it, I actually found myself wishing I'd seen it as a movie first, because I think the right cast could mine real comedy gold from it. But as it was, I thought it was playing a genuine, understandably developed mental health crisis as being the sufferer's fault, laughing at her rather than with her. I don't think that was the intention, at all, but I couldn't shake that reading. If you like Arrested Development-esque zany humor, you'll probably love this book...I'm honestly the only person I know who didn't. But it wasn't for me and I can't in good faith recommend it.

[MurderByDeath]

I should be rating this one higher than I am; at least 4.5 stars.  I picked it up with the intention of just reading a page or two and suddenly two hours passed.  I couldn't stop reading it.   

But when I finished I just didn't feel that 4.5 star feeling.  We can blame it on a woeful job on the part of the copy editor (lots of missing words), for lack of anything else.  Because I really enjoyed the epistolary style, and I enjoyed the characters (except Soo-Lin; her, I wanted to smack and not for the obvious reasons).  The writing was excellent even without the full compliment of articles and conjunctions and a lot of it was funny.   

My only niggle was the ending felt abrupt; I'd have like a bit more information about what Bernadette and Elgin were going to do about those 'complications' at the end.

[jamiereadthis]

Oh boy, loved it. Had practically no expectations and was charmed and delighted. I was out of town, and disappointed with a book I’d brought with me that I thought I’d love, when this caught my eye in a bookshop. I remembered reviews from Ashley and Meg (where’s a Goodreads tagging feature when you need it?) and snatched it right up.

Right book, right time. So sharp, so smart, but with a big heart. Gobs of character development and surprises in everyone. Plus Antarctica!

I like satire the most when it sides with the people it skewers to say they’re also all right.

[Sam@WLABB]

If I was asked to describe this book in a phrase, I would say, over the top, but fun. Bernadette was ridiculous, and I think that is why I kept listening. I loved Bea, and I loved how fiercely she loved her mom. Many of characters had major quirks, but they just added to the over the top charm.

[clq]

I'm generally not the kind of person who struggles to put down a book. Even if I really like it, I'm generally fine with putting it down and coming back to it later. This was a book the made me miss my bus-stops, my bed-times, and almost a flight. It had me hooked from the first couple of pages and never let me go.

The story is told through various forms of correspondence between the characters, as well as occasional interjections by the main character, Bee. This is one of those stories that keeps changing directions, subtly but forcefully. Once I think I've become comfortable with it and know where it's going, it takes a turn and throws me off. In the best possible way.

Telling the story through correspondence makes it very personal, and you have to judge characters based on how they want to appear to others, and how others perceive them. It becomes very immersing, very interesting, and there is always a great deal of anticipation of what will be revealed next.

This is a really good book. It's a very quick read, a great story, and a really effective way of telling it.

[mbtc]

I really enjoyed this book. It was a spunky and unexpected story. I loved the format of the book - the letters and documents really add a great dimension to the book. The format reminded me of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which is one of my favorite books.