Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

A friend recommended Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple as a quick, fun summer read, which it is. I actually finished it several days ago, but I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to say about it until now.

A little background: Bernadette Fox is one unhappy lady. Living in Seattle, married to a Microsoft exec, with a well-loved daughter, you might think she'd be a bit happier. Instead, she is, essentially, a recluse, who hates (in no particular order) the rain, the drivers, Idaho, Canada, other parents at her daughters school, and leaving the house. She hires a virtual personal assistant from India to do things like make Thanksgiving dinner reservations. So things really fall apart when her daughter insists on a family trip to Antarctica one Christmas. Fall apart as in Bernadette disappears, hence the title of the book. She just might be a little crazy.

I liked a lot about this book, most especially the style. It's written as a collection of emails, memos, letters from school, and other assorted documents, with the occasional narrative paragraph through in for good measure. The style allows for multiple perspectives simultaneously and also moves the story along at a rapid clip. The plot itself is pretty kooky, but just this side of believable from a reader perspective. (Fishing vests, the Russian mafia, and mudslides are all involved somewhere along the line, no easy feat for a writer!)

I had a harder time connecting with the characters themselves. Bernadette is, as previously stated, coming undone. I had a hard time pinning how Semple wanted the reader to feel about Bernadette's fellow private school mothers and even husband and father Elgin. All too often,15-year-old Bee feels like the most grown-up person in the room...er, book.

Semple does manage what would seem to be impossible by keeping a book about a mother's disappearance fun and upbeat. It reads quickly and at no point did I contemplate abandoning Where'd You Go, Bernadette? Still, I hesitate to give it a full endorsement because at the end of the day it felt just a little bit hollow.