Where’d you go, Bernadette?

 

I just finished a pretty quirky “dysfunctional family” book called Where’d you go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple.  There is humor in this one, which captures the story of Bernadette, a former renowned architect turned reclusive housewife (to Elgin) and mother to Bee (Balakrishna is her full name).  Bernadette had a series of miscarriages earlier in her life, but was able to have Bee and turns all of her attention to her.  Bee is in the eighth grade at a “hoity-toity” exclusive suburban grade school, though not at the highest level as it is competing with one other for Seattle’s elite students.  Elgin is employed at Microsoft as one of the top technical engineers creating a robot (Samantha 2) for the Walter Reed hospital to assist vets with disabilities.  With this as a background, the lives of the family goes haywire when the Galler Street School is having an open house for the elite Seattle parents at Bernadette’s neighbors home (not one of her favorite people!) which turns into a fiasco when a mudslide knocks into the home DURING the event!  Bernadette never liked the parents, specifically the mothers, of the Galler Street School, calling them “gnats!”  Add the fact that when picking Bee up from school, Bernadette is accused of running over the foot of the same neighbor parent, and all is about to break lose.  Let’s add in Elgin’s troubles: Microsoft having layoffs, Samantha 2 project under scrutiny, and his new admin assistant (a divorcee also a parent of a child at the Galler School) who has the hots for Elgin, and realizing his wife needs a psychological intervention (he finds her in a store asleep in the front window dressed in strange attire!) you have the making of a pretty outrageous family upheaval, including a disappearing Bernadette, a daughter off to boarding school, the admin assistant getting pregnant by Elgin, and a trip to Antarctica!  I loved the flow of the story, the creative writing style) almost like watching MTV – each section written in the voice of one of the characters, sometimes an email, a text, or prose.  It kept the story interesting, fun, and moving quickly.   It is a cute read, nothing that will make you think more about the meaning of life (some might think a mindless book, which doesn’t mean not entertaining).  Light-hearted and will keep you chuckling.  While I don’t think I will call it memorable, it was so creative and I could see it as a movie for sure.