Book Review: Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Release Date: August 14, 2012
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

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.

A once-famous Los Angeles-based architect, Bernadette Fox has been living in suburban Seattle, as a stay-at-home mom for many years now, ever since her husband took a job as a big wig at Microsoft. She doesn’t fit in with the pretentious moms, who she calls “gnats”, at her daughter’s middle school. She and her husband promised their daughter Bee a trip to Antarctica as an eighth-grade graduation present and Bee is determined to hold them to that promise. Just the thought of being on a cruise ship triggers Bernadette’s already barely controlled anxiety. Before you know it, Bernadette is gone.

Why did I wait so long to read this book?? Where’d You Go, Bernadette has the satirical humor that I love if it’s done right. And it definitely is in this book. The moms at Bee’s school remind me a bit of the snobby moms in Big Little Lies. The author wrote for the TV show Arrested Development if that gives you an idea of the kind of comedy she employed. It’s not a frivolous book though. There are some heartbreaking moments – there has to be when a child’s mother goes missing. The way Bernadette’s husband reacts when he finds out about some of her antics she’d kept hidden from him made me mad at him on her behalf.

The story is told in modern-day epistolary fashion through emails, faxes and other supporting documents. It’s the perfect format. I don’t think it would be half as good written in a typical narrative.

Once again, there are several reviews on Amazon complaining that this book is not realistic. I really wish people would stop it already. It’s satire! Suspend your disbelief and enjoy. I sure did!