Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

  

It's About:  A modern day family trying to live the dream and failing miserably.  Bernadette Fox and Elgie Branch are quite the power couple.  Bernadette is an award-winning architect and Elgie Branch is the next great computer genius.  They have one precious daughter, Bee, who was born with heart defects.  The story belongs to the very fragile and sensitive and artistic Bernadette as she learns to negotiate through a series of mean people.  It's the story of what happens when Bernadette internalizes her emotional wounds.  It's a story teeming with Seattle references if you're in that neck of the woods. 

I Thought:  It starts out uproariously funny.  There are several laugh out loud parts.  You know those books where you begin to talk it up and beg others to read it when you've only read about 1/3 of the book?  This is one of those.  Have you ever had one of those books take a crazy twist and now, not so much, do you wish you would have referred it to certain of your people?  This is that book.  The book that begins with a woman that suffers greatly from what seems mild social anxiety really deals with a host of mental issues.  I'm no psychiatrist and would never attempt to diagnose Bernadette and neither does the author (How's that for a triple negative?).  What we do experience as the reader is Bernadette's downward spiral.  And she takes her precious family with her.  

Almost everyone suffers from some form of mild social anxiety.  Almost everyone can relate. I think social anxiety exhibits in both the loner and the groupies.   I particularly can relate because Bernadette experiences the snooty private school parents kind of social anxiety and she is the loner. (Let's just say I've lived that).   Bernadette rocks it.  Bernadette spends her days hiding out from "The Mothers" much to their chagrin.  That's the funny part.

Act II becomes a little more intense.  Elgie becomes sort of a dark knight and swoops in out of no where.  Actually he swoops in from his very cool Microsoft job where he hung out in the first part of the book.  He reveals Bernadette's back story and we begin to see that this is not mild social anxiety we are dealing with.   Although the words are still quite humorous, there is a dark and somber tone, IMO.  The book never stops being "funny" throughout and it is a page turner type of read.  It's just you get use to one type of humor and then it turns into another kind of humor all together.

Can I Recommend It?  Yes, but just not to those sensitive souls that do not find mean funny. 

Try this at home:  This idea related to the building of homes, but it can be applied to any consumer product, I think:

Ford Coppola had a sign on his trailer:  "Fast, Cheap, Good:  Pick Two." i.e. Fast and Cheap will never be Good. Just like Cheap and Good will never be Fast. 


For some reason I keep thinking of the 4 Dell computers that we bought at the beginning of this year.  Son 1 has had his replaced twice for faulty hard drive and now mine has been sent away to Texas for the same reason.   I do not believe in those d*** store warranties that cost almost as much as the computer, and yet without them you are pretty much cooked.