Campfire Reads Review: Where'd You Go Bernadette?
“ I got a huge knot in my stomach because if Antarctica could talk, it would be saying only one thing: you don't belong here.”
Author: Maria Semple
Goodreads Description: (abridged) 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 Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears. To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence—creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.
Have you ever just wanted to leave everything behind and sail to Antarctica?
No? Me neither. I’d probably tell the captain to turn the ship around and head to South America instead. As far as cold, icy places are concerned, I’m perfectly fine with just reading about them and letting someone else do the exploring. I guess that makes me more like Bernadette in the beginning of the novel than at the end (minus the anxiety and over-medication).
“ We'd pass icebergs floating in the middle of the ocean. They were gigantic, with strange formations carved into them. They were so haunting and majestic you could feel your heart break, but really they're just chunks of ice and they mean nothing.”
If I’m being perfectly honest, I sort of wish the book had started with Bernadette’s disappearance. Bee and her father’s search for her was, in my opinion, the most engaging part of the book, and I wanted more of it. It had a borderline silly father-daughter mystery quality to it that was really fun to read, especially, when they started busting out maps and stealing boats.
“My heart started racing, not the bad kind of heart racing, like I'm going to die. But the good kind of heart racing, like, Hello, can I help you with something? If not, please step aside because I'm about to kick the shit out of life.”
I guess another reason why I liked those chapters best was that they were in first person, not in the epistolary format of the earlier chapters. I’ve never been super into books made up of correspondence–which is just my personal preference, not a critique of Semple’s choice to do it that way. In fact, I think using email correspondence was effective in conveying the gossipy nature of her neighbors. Actually, I might have even enjoyed the letter format if there was more gossip about Bernadette post-disappearance than prior to.
“[The cover sheet] set forth the psychological profile of candidates best suited to withstand the extreme conditions at the South Pole. They are "individuals with blasé attitudes and antisocial tendencies”… For the past twenty years I've been in training for overwintering at the South Pole! I knew I was up to something.”
I can see why this book was a huge hit. I’m a big fan of fish-out-of-water stories, so when I realized that Bernadette had run off to the one place she was most terrified of going, my interest level spiked. I could totally see her in a pair of sunglasses, passed out on some iceberg somewhere while a penguin ran away with her scarf. Again, I just wish it had happened earlier. After all, the title is Where’d You Go Bernadette? but for most of the novel, we know exactly where she is. Maybe Semple will write a sequel entitled Bernadette Runs Away in Chapter Two. If so, I’ll probably read it.
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