Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Bernadette can be difficult to like, but that's partly why I love her character. She's unapologetically authentic with sharp edges and a serious dislike of Seattle. Rather than grimace at her put-downs of my hometown, I laughed because she included inside jokes only Seattlites would understand, and there was a granule of truth in all of it.

I'm intensely interested in the challenges and rewards of motherhood. Portraying it as something emotionally draining and frustrating, utterly consuming and ultimately wonderful, Maria Semple captured what many of us experience using Bernadette as her medium.

I love this highly imaginative story about Bernadette, who dares to seek more fulfillment in her already full life. I love that the book shows how a woman can so deeply love her child and embrace motherhood and still be hungry for her other, former, and future creative self and all the potential therein.

The title refers to this dilemma while also to the wild goose chase that Bernadette sends her exceptional daughter and husband on to find her in the wilds of Antarctica. This book touched my heart and surprised me.

How can you not love a novel about an agoraphobic mother who somehow promises her 15-year-old daughter that she’ll take her to Antarctica?

The mom, Bernadette, knows she can’t handle that kind of trip, but in her desperate attempts to make it work, things get out of hand, and Bernadette disappears. It’s up to 15-year-old Bee to play detective and find her. Set in Seattle, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? is a delightful mix of comedy and satire with a wonderful message about the need to face up to the disappointments in one’s past.

At the heart of this book is an important message: creativity cannot and should not be suppressed.

I’m a creative person, and if I’m not writing, I’m making things with my hands—paper crafts, water coloring, miniatures, cross stitch—you name it.

In this book, Bernadette gives up her joy of creativity because of relentless criticism, lack of appreciation for her work, and self-imposed responsibilities—until she discovers it’s the work that matters.

There is so much to love about this interesting, thought-provoking book. Bernadette is an awesome character—a brilliant architect whose early success has stopped her cold.

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There’s something cathartic about reading a midlife meltdown story, and this one is over-the-top hilarious. Once a successful architect, the eccentric, misanthropic Bernadette Fox is fed up with what her life has become. When she disappears without a trace, her precocious teenage daughter sets out to track her down. The story is told almost entirely through emails, letters, memos, and other bits of correspondence, making it a fast, fun read. 

Witty, hilarious, and heartbreaking, Maria Semple’s book about a modern family living in Seattle confronting modern meaninglessness is inventive and playful in its use of forms. Each chapter feels like a new opportunity for Semple to explore a different way of capturing this family of three that has begun to drift apart. Part mystery, part satire, the novel perfectly captures the absurdity of trying to understand the strange people we call family.

When Bernadette Fox triggers a mudslide into a fancy party because of her snooty neighbor’s imperious demands, I was hooked. This wonderfully weird story of the offbeat, agoraphobic, but not-actually-crazy Bernadette is a darkly funny exploration of how easy it is for an eccentric woman to be tarred as a madwoman and rushed offstage, lest she causes more ruckus.

What I found fascinating about this book is that the escape this privileged woman (Bernadette) is trying to make is from her own life. Twice! She successfully escapes from her previous life as an architect to become a stay-at-home mom but discovers over time that what she escaped from was what she truly needed in her life. She lost her creative drive. And so, she tries to escape her new life as well. The story then becomes a search for Bernadette by her daughter and husband. Where’d You Go, Bernadette? makes it abundantly clear that the grass isn’t always greener,… show more.

Maria Semple takes a serious topic—the disappearance of a mother—and transforms the novel by expertly weaving humor throughout the story. Bernadette Fox is a housebound, well-regarded architect whose brilliant past is largely unknown to those around her. Just before a  planned trip to Antarctica with her family, she goes missing. The book is narrated by her 15-year-old daughter Bee Branch whose research helps her better understand her previously baffling mother. 

Bernadette is technically from a dysfunctional family but that dysfunction is mostly centered around her. She’s an incredibly intelligent recluse who mysteriously leaves her daughter and husband after a school fundraiser goes south. I could relate to Bernadette’s paranoia and the way fear can rear its ugly head if you’re not careful.