Nightstands & Coffee Tables

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple | review by Meredith McKinnie

“No matter what people say about Mom now, she sure knew how to make life funny.”

Bernadette Fox is a creative, eccentric woman, who’s wealth allows her the freedom to be a little crazy. She obsesses over fishing vests with numerous compartments to hide gadgets she insists on carrying; she complains about Seattle’s layout and the incompetence of its drivers with wild intensity; hires a personal assistant in India via the Internet to avoid everyday tasks; and meticulously plans a family trip to Antarctica, all the while looking for a reason not to go. She remains lovable through her interactions with her teenage daughter Bee, whom she refuses to shelter from the truth and loves with everything she has. Bernadette tells her, “I need you to know how hard it is for me…the banality of life.” It is through her relationship with Bee that readers fall in love with and care about the whereabouts of Bernadette.

The nontraditional format of the novel is an adjustment. Narrated by Bee, we meet Bernadette through her daughter’s eyes. She connects with her mother through The Beatles, explaining Bernadette’s actions through lyrics and song titles, showcasing an intuitive child wise beyond her years. She speaks of her mother in past tense, with a willingness to overlook her flaws and embrace her quirkiness as realness. Bee’s recounts instances leading up to Bernadette’s disappearance, interrupted by email and letter correspondence between other private school moms, school administrators, and Bernadette’s own requests of her Internet personal assistant.

Readers follow the trail amassed by Bee to locate her missing mother, who vanished out the bathroom window when her husband had a social worker inquire about her mental health.

It’s hard to ignore the “offness,” so to speak, of Bernadette’s actions. Her husband’s big important job at Microsoft requires him to be away from the house most of the time, and the traditional role of mother caring for daughter becomes reversed. The family has become so accustomed to the chaos of their isolated existence that they don’t recognize their own environment disintegrating. Elgin, the husband, describes their home: “Leaks had become holes in the roof; windows with small cracks had become cardboard-and-duct-tape panels. Once a week, the gardener weed-whacked under the rugs. Our home was literally returning to the earth.”

Bernadette often pontificates the Seattle locals, those born and who refuse to leave the city, citing the “water and mountains” as all one needs. The Foxes are outsiders, constantly reminded of their otherness, judged and juried by their wealth and refusal to conform, and all spearheaded and highlighted by the antics of Bernadette. As readers, we begin to adjust to the craziness of Bernadette’s life, like witnessing an animal trapped in a cage, rooting for its escape, then rooting for Bee to find Bernadette, whose primary virtue is that she seems to get what most humans don’t about life.

Semple’s writing is full laugh-out-loud humor where the weirdo in all of us can find refuge. The major motion picture starring Cate Blanchett, Kristen Wiig, and Billy Crudup will be released August 16th of this year.