Where'd You Go, Bernadette

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.

Maria Semple’s comic novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette looks at wife and mom Bernadette, who’s falling apart: she can’t deal with her hometown, Seattle, the other moms in her orbit, her neighbors, or much of anything, really. Overwhelmed, Bernadette breaks down and disappears, which leaves Bernadette’s middle-school-age daughter, Bee, to figure out where Bernadette has gone, and why. By the end of this novel, Bernadette, who’s taken herself on a very unlikely trip, has gotten herself together in a whole new way. Where’d You Go, Bernadette also makes great use of emails, texts, and other fictional documents, making it a… show more.

In this wildly imaginative and delightfully funny novel that includes a family trip to Antarctica, the main character, Bernadette Fox, is an unconventional mother to say the least. Her marriage is in trouble and she abandons her daughter. And yet, this family loves one another so deeply, they find ways to face their problems that bring them closer together.

Bernadette Fox—certified genius, failed architect, reluctant Pacific Northwesterner, loving mother, PTA-dodger, and quite possibly the worst neighbor ever—is one of my favorite quirky protagonists. I love the structure of this book, laid out in epistolary form as Bernadette’s daughter Bee’s search for her mother when she disappears in Antarctica. (Yep, Antarctica. Trust me.) This is a funny, quirky read, but the book is also about creativity, mental illness, motherhood, and what happens to women who need to create and are stymied. I hit a big reading slump during my own entrance into motherhood—Bernadette lifted me out, reminding me of who… show more.

Razor-sharp wit and flawed characters populate this delightful novel focused on the creative life of a genius architect trying to balance home life with art. The book which includes an unlikely correspondence with a virtual assistant pokes fun at the main character’s need for connection which is often lost in the modern technological world which often estranges instead of connects.