"Where'd You Go Bernadette" is a very stealthy book of ideas and insights, wrapped in a delectable froth of humor, nonsense, mystery and suspense. Tucked into that enviable combination is a moving story of unconditional love between parent and child, and a surprisingly sure and intimate portrait of what it looks and feels like when someone loses touch with their central identity. All in a book that you could cheerfuly knock back as easy beach reading. A truly terrific book.
So many others here have already described the plot better than a back cover summary could do, so I won't duplicate their efforts but will just skip to my reactions to the writing and the story.
It took me a while to decide whether Bernadette Fox was a contemptible, self-absorbed elitist with epic anger management issues, or my new hero. By the end of the book (okay, midway) I'd concluded she's probably not quite either, but I was leaning very heavily toward the latter. I started out feeling a teensy bit defensive and offended, and trying to figure whether I was supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy in Bernadette's world. Then I decided I didn't care, and enjoyed the ride. As a parent who once very deliberately chose a "Subaru school" over a "Mercedes school" (as the socially insecure fundraisers for Bernadette's daughter, Bee's, private school characterize them ), I found myself alternately bristling at and howling with empathic glee over Semple and Bernadette's scorn for the ideas of community, and the more mindless examples of PCism and the more judgmental forms of ersatz earth-motherhood. Even in the clutches of what turns out to have been a long, slow free-fall of existential crisis, depression, anxiety, neuroses and agoraphobia, reclusive Bernadette is smarter, braver, more creative, more honest, more demanding of integrity, more nurturing, funnier and MUCH more fun than any of the other moms at school.
She also has a distinctly individualistic and social Darwinist world view that is not always compassionate (a term Bernadette scorns, apparently confusing it with weakness, fuzzy-headednes or pandering) or altogether likeable (especially in her crazier, more bitterly misanthropic moments, even if these are very funny), but for the most part it's highly principled and very frequently right on. Agree or disagree with Bernadette, love her or loathe her, if she doesnt make you stop and think, you've missed something. Sample's and Bernadette's championship of traditional education, hard and fast objective standards, self-reliance, individual creativity and the radical idea that it is legitimate to treat extraordinarily talented contributors to society (or a company) as superior to those of mediocre ability will ring a bell with those who have read Aym Rand's "The Fountainhead," and presumably it's no coincidence that Bernadette is an iconoclastic architect. Fortunately for all of us, Bernadette is more three-dimensionally human, more vulnerable, mouthier and infinitely more fun than Howard Roarke. Unfortunately for her, she's even less suited to live in a world that contains other people than Roarke is. When Bernadette's overly withdrawn and idiosyncratic world collides disasterously with the busy-body, run of the mill, overly interventionist world around her, something has to go -- and it turns out to be Bernadette.
This epistolary style book is a crazy, outsized, hilarious romp composed of emails between snooty and self-deluded mothers at the private school, said mothers and "blackberry abatement specialists," Bernadette and the India-based e-personal assistant that she has hired for 75 cents per hour to make her dentist appointments, old newspaper stories, excerpts from a TEDTalk by Bernadette's software rockstar husband, police reports, ship's logs, school news bulletins, parent communications from a PTSD specialist, FBI profiles, hospital bills, apocalyptic weather reports; you name it, all tied together with interpolations by Bernadette's very poised 14 year old daughter, Bee. Bee is probably the only reliable narrator in the book, and she's a lovely creation: smart, motivated, aware, with a highly developed BS meter, but warm, enthusiastic, full of goofy inside jokes, and open to wonder, surprise and pain despite her maturity. Bee is at once a matter of fact, irreverent and deeply sympathetic guide through the events that lead to her mother's disappearance. Ultimately it is the laser -like focus of mother and daughter on each other that propels the story, and gives coherence to Bernadette's seemingly fractured character. Even when you don't know whether or not you should be pulling for Bernadette, you know you are pulling for Bee -- which is perhaps what makes this otherwise philosophically complex book an easy, straight- forward read that you won't want to put down.
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Popular Highlights in this book
Maybe that’s what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place.Highlighted by 3,333 Kindle readers- “When your eyes are softly focused on the horizon for sustained periods, your brain releases endorphins. It’s the same as a runner’s high. These days, we all spend our lives staring at screens twelve inches in front of us. It’s a nice change.”Highlighted by 2,684 Kindle readers
- People like you must create. If you don’t create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.Highlighted by 1,605 Kindle readers
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Reviews with images
Love it!
Reread 2019: on this reread let me tell you something. This book was even better than I remembered it from 2014. I laughed, I Cried and I laughed some more. I think what I take away from this book is truly the love between Bernadette, her daughter Bee and her husband Elgin. Bee and Elgin went to LITERALLY the end of the earth in hopes of finding Bernadette. The way the book is plotted is brilliant and the use of personal emails, reports, letters and police reports only made this book come alive even more. You are in on the journey. This book is one of my favorite books of all time and will continue to be. Please read it! Also the blackberry branch scene is still my favorite!
Top reviews from other countries
Kindle Customer
Light, airy, witty, mystery and original
Reviewed in India on December 8, 2020patricia
where’d you go bernadette cate blanchett
Reviewed in Brazil on November 30, 2017