Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel (edition 2012)

Fifteen year old Bee is wise beyond her years and when she scores exceptional grades in school, her parents promise her a trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette, Bee’s mom, is far from your average mother. Once a famous architect in Los Angeles, she now struggles to fit in with the super mothers in the elite Seattle, Washington area. When she disappears only days before Christmas, she leaves behind a guilty husband and a questioning daughter who will go to any extreme to find out what happened to Bernadette. Bee begins to piece together school memos, email messages, newspaper interviews and bits of “evidence” in the days leading up to Bernadette’s disappearance. The result? A wildly entertaining, sometimes poignant, and often hilarious story about parenting in the 21st century, religion, American culture and finding oneself in the process.

Maria Semple is very funny. Her novel is often bitingly sarcastic as she skewers the superficiality of elitism. Semple has written for the television series Mad About You and also Ellen…and her ability to write satire is unparalleled. I found myself literally laughing out loud at the situations in which Semple’s characters find themselves. The book pokes fun at the green movement, private school parents (and the administrators of those schools), and corporate America, while delivering a tale about the relationship between mother and daughter.

One of the themes of the novel is identity – specifically Bernadette’s identity of artist which becomes lost amid her role as wife and mother. One character from Bernadette’s past observes:

If you don’t create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.

That observation is prophetic and it is this idea of being true to oneself which ultimately drives the narrative in this delightful book.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette delivers on many levels: great characters, an original plot, and a witty format. Short listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year, it also demonstrates that smart women’s fiction has found its way into the literary circles.

Readers who are looking for humor, great writing, originality and ultimately characters who touch their hearts, need look no further.

Highly recommended. ( )

I have rarely enjoyed reading a book more than this. Great satire, and as a parent of a child in a school just like the one central to this story, I know these characters. Sure, these are exagerations (sometimes not by much) but such is the heart of satire. I marked it down one star for two reasons. 1) I don't think the author knows a lot of 15 year olds. Bee is a great character, but she behaves as a 12 year old. That is even more true of her best friend, Kennedy. This was jarring sometimes, and really took me out of the story. 2) The author loved her characters that she felt compelled to redeem them. That is unfortunate. She wrote a fantastic villian. She should have left that alone.

All in all a very fun read. I don't know why this is being looked at as a book for women, it is not -- definitely to be enjoyed by all regardless of genetalia and/or gender identity. Some people say it is written for the 1%. I call BS. I like Faulkner and Murakami and Jane Austen, though my life is nothing like theirs or their characters ( )

Bernadette seems bizarre, implausible, and very unsympathetic...and then she doesnt. All of a sudden her retreat from life seems a bit too believable for comfort. The characters are so well done, especially Bernadette and Bee, that they seem bizarrely real. From the strange old house they live in, to the horrid PTA/neighbor types, to the online PA--somehow it just worked. As more is revealed about her (their) life, the more understandable it all becomes. The bifocal factory, the 20 mile house...so cool, and in the case of the latter...so sad. Without giving too much away--the resolution works in that the characters act in a way that we've been led to think would be believable. I hate it when the denouement is something so out of character or ridiculous that it ruins the book.
Really enjoyable -- really well done. ( )

I loved this book. According to the author, many people claim THEY are just like “Bernadette” and I feel the same way. But I am right. It is I who am like Bernadette; the author captured me entirely! Well, except for the genius part. But the road rage, the people rage, the rage over injustice and the rest of it? Totally me!

Bernadette Fox is a former recipient of a genius grant because of her innovative architectural design. Now she is a frustrated angry housewife but loving mother to Bee, 15 and gifted. Bernadette’s husband Elgin is a top-level designer at Microsoft, who puts in long hours and exercises religiously when not at work. The family lives in a crumbling former school at the top of Queen Anne Hill, a neighborhood in Seattle.

As you can glean from the title, the plotline concerns the sudden apparent disappearance of Bernadette.

Much of the fun in this mostly-epistolary satirical book comes from the setting: from the climbing blackberry vines on the hill to the status-climbing parents at Bee’s school; from the hilarious send-up of the Seattle lifestyle to the ubiquity and comic possibilities of outsourcing; and of course from the hypocritical and fickle nature of humankind.

But this delightful book isn’t all about carping; it’s also about love, and how one will literally go to the ends of the earth for it. I’d call this a “don’t miss this” book!

Evaluation: After reading this, I immediately emailed everyone I knew looking for a good book. This one is imaginative, funny, and poignant, with witty and penetrating social commentary that is right on target. ( )

I read reviews that this was a sharp new book, witty and different, so I picked it up. I have to admit I didn't like it at first, but it grew on me as I went along. Bernadette is not only quirky, she seems like a flake, but things aren't always as they appear. The book is a collection of emails, letters, files and other correspondences that tells the story of Bea, a equally quirky (yet gifted) child searching to know why her Mother disappeared on the eve of their family trip to Antarctica.

As a reader I am left with many questions among them are:

1. Did or does Maria Semple live in Seattle? 'cause boy she hates it!

2. Did she go to Antarctica as research for her book, and if she did could she take it off on her taxes? If the answer to that question is YES, I want to write a book that takes place in Paris, Australia, and an adventure that takes place on an Alaskan cruise liner.

After all my snide-ness though, I have to admit liking the book. It was a fun escape after reading several serious titles. ( )