Where'd You Go, Bernadette

At first I really wasn't sure if I would like this book. The format it was written in was not something I was familiar with (okay, it's just a bunch of emails); it felt really disorganized and I had trouble remembering who was who. Mea culpa: I really think it was my fault for not researching more on the book before diving in. I didn't know who was telling the story, or how all of these emails were related.

But I really wanted to like this book. I had waited for it to be available at the library (!), the ratings on GoodReads were great, there was no way I'd let my ADD brain win this one. And I'm glad I kept on reading, because about 90 pages in, everything sort of fell into place, and the book was excellent!

Read more over @ The Hungry Bookster

This quick take originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
—

Do you get seasick? People who don't get seasick have no idea what it's like. It's not just nausea. It's nausea plus losing the will to live.

You probably think, U.S./Canada, they're interchangeable because they're both filled with English-speaking, morbidly obese white people. Well, Manjula, you couldn't be more mistaken.

Americans are pushy obnoxious, neurotic, crass – anything and everything – the full catastrophe as our friend Zorba might say. Canadians are one of that. . . To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD, John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone's ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality.

Really, who wants to admit to her daughter that she was once considered the most promising architect in the country, but now devotes her celebrated genius to maligning the driver in front of her for having Idaho plates?”

Entertaining read compiled in an interesting way - through emails, letters, an article, and even a fax or two providing different perspectives, with remaining parts of the book told through the perspective of Bee, Bernadette's daughter. It's definitely quirky and not what I expected, although I don't know what I was expecting. I enjoyed it for the most part. Not a book I can't wait to recommend to others but not one I'd encourage others to pass on either. Would probably make a great beach read.

This was a great read and I had a lot of fun reading it! For this I alternated between the audiobook and the physical copy and both were great, but I think the audiobook better helps the reader understand the whole story because of all the exchange of messages between multiple characters. I am now excited to watch the movie that's coming out later this year! I hope it will be as fun and entertaining as the book!

Bernadette is a brilliant architect who has had a major melt down and is dismayed to find herself living in the cultural backwaters of Seattle with her beloved husband Elgin and beloved daughter Bee, friendless and unhappy, so unable to function in the world outside her crumbling home that she hires a virtual assistant in India to manage all her day-to-day activities.

That's all you really need to know, I think.

How does that sound? It's zany and a bit of a comic book novel, perhaps, but if this little blurb sounds fun, you will probably find the book to be fun, too.

I admit I didn't feel ‘hooked' upon reading this book initially...  the pace felt slow, the characters slightly relatable yet quite foreign to understand and the unfamiliar way of presentation with shifting point of views; it wasn't easy. However, that seemed to change when I got a few pages in and I‘d gotten myself into this whirlwind of emotions. Characters were pretty realistically written, each having their positive and negatives drawn out. The storytelling has a very convincing style where I found myself changing perspectives and views about everything that went on. What I most liked about this book is how it managed to cover quite a few themes that are of essence in the world today. Loss of passion, mental health, out of character behaviour, maternal bond and this emotional detachment that can't really be explained. Miscommunications, misunderstandings, and a true sense of yin and yang that exists within every human. Sure, it's a work of fiction at the end with quite a few unbelievable twists and turns. But for those who like to delve in deep, there's more to this book than plain wittiness. Despicable characters also have their moments of redemption. 

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is one of the best books I've read all year!

The story is a quirky one, and for me, it was the perfect amount of quirky. I read this on the train when I was returning from vacation, and it was wonderfully entertaining for a stretch of hours that could otherwise be considered boring!

The story is, in a nutshell, about family. Bernadette is the mom of the family, and she's definitely not a normal, run-of-the-mill kind of mom. She's a hilariously whacky used-to-be architect living in Seattle with her husband, Elgin (who's a bigwig at Microsoft), and daughter Bee. The story unfolds through a series of correspondences between the main and secondary characters, plus Bee's interjections and narrations at points.

Read the rest of my review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/07/review-whered-go-bernadette-maria-semple/

Oh my GOSH I loved this book SO MUCH. For me it's a 10 hour roundtrip drive to my parents' house, so whenever I go home I try to do an audiobook. But it's such a flat, boring drive that I need something really good to hold my attention or else I get bored and switch to music. This was GREAT, the kind of audiobook that had me anxiously putting the next disc in as soon as I could. Really funny narration–I especially loved her voice for Bee, the teenage narrator.

When I saw that Maria Semple had written for Arrested Development I thought, that makes total sense. This reminded me of Arrested Development in the best way–larger than life characters who are also very human, insane plot twists that some how all come back together at the end. And it's SO funny and well-observed.

ES/EN

Me ha alucinado esta lectura. No sabía muy bien qué esperar al leer la sinopsis, no parecía un thriller, pero tampoco no dejaba de parecerlo. La cosa no mejora cuando abres el libro y está contado a través de varios formatos epistolares, y la voz principal de la hija de la protagonista, Bee. Pero no por ello dejó de fascinarme, página tras página, a pesar de que, como la protagonista que da nombre al libro, no sabía hacia donde iba. Inteligente, cautivador, fresco y sorprendente, este libro me ha maravillado y me ha entregado una de las lecturas más fascinantes y satisfactorias del verano. 10/10
/////
I was blown away by this reading. I didn't quite know what to expect when I read the synopsis, it didn't sound like a thriller, but it didn't stop sounding like one either. It doesn't get any better when you open the book and it's told through various epistolary formats, and the main voice of the main character's daughter, Bee. But it didn't fail to fascinate me, page after page, even though, like the protagonist after whom the book is named, I didn't know where I was going. Intelligent, captivating, fresh and surprising, this book blew me away and delivered one of the most fascinating and satisfying reads of the summer. 10/10

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was not prepared for the ending (I was reading it on iBooks and foolishly thought that when it said I had 15 more pages that I actually had 15 more pages). Semple has done a wonderful job creating quirky characters that I either loved right off the bat (Bee and Bernadette) or grew to love (Elgie). I felt as angry as Bee was at Elgie with his infidelity, his leaps to conclusions, and his complete inability to listen to or understand his wife. I cheered when Bee found her mom, happy that she wasn't at the bottom of the sea. I liked Bernadette's letter, explaining all that had happened but I wanted to see her come home, I wanted to see how Elgie and Bernadette worked out their issues, how the “gnat” and baby fit into their lives and see the growth in all of them.

Had such high expectations -that weren't quite met. Kept waiting for fun, excitement or more human characters, only found psychos. The one I wanted to know better was the daughter, but the narrative kept alternating between the obnoxious neighbor, the eccentric dad, the uninteresting admin - who, despite the fact she was uninteresting all the way, became relevant to the story at some point -, the oblivious police officers and health professionals... argh! bottom line, there was no one I actually felt sympathetic or liked or found even believable in the whole book, except - a little - Bee.

Short Review: This is a flawed satire about the top 1% in Seattle. It does not work as satire and the characters are too unlikeable (and unreal) for it to work as a straight story. The writing is decent and I think the author (known for her work writing for Arrested Development and Mad About You) has real talent. But in this case the book just didn't work.

Click through for my full review http://bookwi.se/bernadette/

Sometimes in order to find yourself you need to get lost ...and the characters populating this book are completely and utterly gone.

Titular Bernadette Fox is the ugly American, Real Housewife of Seattle kvetching to her Indian virtual secretary Manjula, who she pays $30.00 a week to pull together travel itineraries, order anti-psychotics and blackberry abatement specialists. She's her offshore confidante who she can unload on about the weather, 5 way intersections and even Canadians.

“One of the main reasons I don't like leaving the house is because I might find myself face-to-face with a Canadian. Seattle is crawling with them. You probably think, U.S./Canada, they're interchangeable because they're both filled with English-speaking, morbidly obese white people. Well, Manjula, you couldn't be more mistaken....The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that's how I fear Canadians. To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD. John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone's ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality. The thing Canadians don't understand is that some people are extraordinary and should be treated accordingly.”

Maria Semple wrote for Arrested Development - which should really be the one line review.

The story is a whirlwind, pieced together from police reports, hasty faxes, email directives to offshore virtual assistants, psychiatric evaluations, school newsletters, FBI abstracts and blogger transcripts. This allows Semple to write each character in their own voice.

From a former MacArther Genius to a Microsoft slash TEDTalk rockstar, private school marketing douche, mooney, self-help (Victims Against Victimhood) admin, high strung neighbour wound drum tight and a preternaturally smart tween daughter (naturally) they're all here. But don't just dismiss it as TV fluff on the page. It's smart and satisfying. Snark without being terribly mean spirited.

Lol. Wouldn't it just be great to run away from all your problems repeatedly and then just have everyone end up being like “well that's just Kaeli being Kaeli”. I found this book incredibly good at points (being the aspiring architect I am) when the author is talking about Bernadette and her career. It was also very quirky, which at times was entertaining, but at other times really has me lost as a reader. The narrator for the audiobook was ANNOYING AF. Do yourself a favor and DO NOT listen to this. All in all this was probably a 2.75/5 on the first read through. I am excited to read this again in bookclub because physically reading it may be a much better experience for me. However, I still believe this: too many loose ends untied or unexplained, missing puzzle pieces, unrealistic reactions of teenagers and husbands. Nothing about this book seemed typical, and it was beyond the realm of explanation. To clarify, all of the characters were developed and you as the reader understood mostly what each character stood for. But, the characters were not explained so fully in their quirkiness that you could actually see them having the reactions to the bizarre situations the author threw them into in the book. I really just don't think this was a well thought out play, personally. It didn't make it awful, it just was incomprehensible at times. This book was just one incredible convoluted, mal-grammared run-on sentence.

Retry: I got farther, but still lost interest. So added another star but I think that's all I have in me. Me and this book are not friends.

Original review: I'm not going to finish this book. I can't stand books about rich, whiny people. It's satirical, but just annoying to me, especially all of the prep school moms. I'll usually at least try to read half of a book before I decide that I'm really annoyed and give up... but this one is just really getting to me.

I just hate it when people behave so differently because of money, and I can't get over it. This book is full of snobs.

The only good thing I can say is that the writing style is GREAT. I may try another Maria Semple book since it's only the character's attitudes that I don't like.

An enjoyable and entertaining read. At first it seemed to be filled with funny yet somewhat stereotypical commentary about private school parents. But then it provided some clever descriptions and insights on the idiosyncrasies of creatives or “geniuses.” As characters develop you can see how each has idiosyncratic behaviors that could be viewed as having mental health issues from a certain perspective. All the while, the pace of the book is fast, easy and light and ends in a warm glow.

i'm conflicted about how to rate this because the last quarter was really, really great but the majority of it was mostly “ok.” it does build up to a touching, cute ending that made me tear up a bit.

Bernadette, as a character, is quite compelling and fun to think about. her quirks, mannerisms, status as a failed, depressed, renowned genius architect who hates people makes her day-to-day interactions a joy to read.

the rest of the cast... are fine. Bee and Elgie really come into their own in the last quarter of the book and i wish they were more interesting earlier.

i started reading this after seeing the movie, which presents Bernadette in a more positive light, i'd say. the movie itself felt very disjointed, so after reading reviews that indicated the book pulled off the same story in a more satisfying way i just had to know for myself.

the book indeed does an overall better job with its collection of various emails, invoices, documents, dialogues, etc. of making an interesting story than the movie does. however, while it is indeed interesting, it's not enough to truly make me gush over its structure. it's cool, but i wish the book leaned way harder into things like invoices, receipts, all the different pieces of litter that one accumulates as they live live to convey narrative. a lot of the material used, like for example the documentary of people being interviewed who had associations with Bernadette, wouldn't have really been different if it was presented as a conversation between a few people. i might even say some of it is more effective in the movie.

as i mentioned in the beginning, the first three fourths of this book was ok but by itself wouldn't have been enough to keep me going through the novel had i not had an utter compulsion to compare its version of events with the movie (as well as maybe how much i related to, or liked to think i related to, Bernadette as a character). in the end i'm glad i did.

i did find this book to be weirdly inspiring.

“people like you must create. if you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society”

if you're someone who used to work on neat little projects but stopped for one reason or another, you might find a lot of yourself in Bernadette.

alright, now i'm off to go kick the shit out of life. thanks Bernadette ❤️

I had a hard time rating this one. It started off amusing, then the catiness b/w the moms got a little too much for me, but then all of the clues revealing what happened to Bernadette really picks up. I was let down by the way the story ended – it felt rushed. However, I'm tacking on an extra star for the simple fact that as annoying as I found some of the characters to be, I must admit they were very realistic. Unfortunately, I knew some people that behaved just like some of the characters in this book. Though this being true is not a good thing, the author deserves the extra star for describing such believable (and at times, pathetic)characters. These types of people aren't isolated to just Seattle! You don't have to be familiar with the city to enjoy this read.