Where'd You Go, Bernadette

by Maria Semple

Book Overview

A misanthropic matriarch leaves her eccentric family in crisis when she mysteriously disappears in this whip-smart and divinely funny novel that inspired the movie starring Cate Blanchett (New York Times).

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316204269
• ISBN13: 9780316204262
• Release Date: April 2013
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Rather Weird

I too found this rather strange all around. Mother is bizarre - maybe too smart. THe whole email thing was weird. I felt sorry for the daughter at every level. Father was non-existent really, and somehow almost didn't seem to care about what was going on. How do you let yourself live in a filthy, leaky home when you should be caring for your daughter's needs, both physically and mentally? Would never recommend this book to anyone. All our bookclub members did NOT like this at all.

what is so great about this book?

Am I missing something? I really dislike this book as a whole. yes, there were some funny parts but I dispise the whole email set up it drove me nuts, made the story really hard to follow. I also don't like the father's character and how he treats bernadette and how the daughter is just a brat and they allow her to be just because she is smart. bernadette is too dependant on what her husband thinks of her and puts out a poor example for her daughter accepting the behavior of her husband which is just wrong. I watched the movie too and it was better but they did lead it to be a very different story by leaving out major parts of the story. Hearsld so many people rave about this book to be disappointed and really peeved because I feel like I'm missing why this is so great but I still don't get it.

Quirky, but good

As a a whole, I enjoyed the book. I laughed a good deal, both for actually funny stuff or in an "oh gosh, these people!" kind of way (which was clearly the authors intention). The author wrote the characters well...I both liked and disliked Bernadette - she's weird, quirky, loves her kid, doesn't get caught up in petty school drama, but is simultaneously petty, irrational, a bit insane and makes such dumb decisions. The other characters are equally well-written. The majority of the book is written through various emails, notes, articles, etc. which I found kind of fun and this fragmented style mimics Bernadette's fragmented and disjointed reasoning and reality. A bit zany and far-fetched, but definitely still a good read.

Quirky!

I hated the character, but I believe she was written purposely that way. For the first 2/3, the book was below average. It felt like a peek into the life of some terrible woman and her rotten life, most issues which were caused by her. However the last third really knocked it out of the park. I couldn’t put it down! I liked it so much better that the movie, which really does not follow the plot of the book and should be considered entirely separately.

apparently, they cleaned the book up A LOT for the Bernadette represented on screen 4/10

I know the book's been pretty celebrated so I figured since the movie was like 8/10, I would enjoy the the book that much more. The format is a series of notes, newsletters and emails between the main characters which really I was super into. But, girl, the amount of subtle racism and classism was unbearable, truly. There's weird email exchanges between Bernadette & her south Asian assistant, Manjula that made me feel kind of uncomfortable. Then, there's a lot written about Bernadette's super intense hatred for homeless people around Seattle which was basically just her hating to see them EXISTING in her presence which is pretty gross. When she finally got around to complaining about restorative justice I knew Bernadette's quirkiness was not enough to carry me over the classism and racism. I stopped reading almost halfway through; sorry, kids, it appears Bernadette is a Karen.

Good enough

This was a humorous book with interesting characters, but it wasn't spectacular. The way it's set up is as if a kid is writing a book report for school comprised of narration, interviews with others, and letters or emails between people that are not the kid retelling the story. While it's not a true story or a riveting account of survival, i's an interesting read, good for a vacation or boring quarantine when you need to kill some time.

It was ok.

I read this book without knowing what the book was about. It was an ok book but nothing really happens until the end. The movie was better.