Maria Semple

Bernadette Fox was once an award-winning architect, and now lives in Seattle with her husband Elgin Branch and their daughter, Bee. Bernadette gave up her work when Elgin took a position with Microsoft; he is widely recognized as a genius. Bernadette has become a recluse, leaving her house only when absolutely necessary and relying on an India-based "personal assistant" to handle most of her administrative responsibilities. She has an antagonistic relationship with other school parents, who show more she refers to as "gnats." Bee started life with a serious heart condition and is now a precocious eight-grader at a second-tier private school. To celebrate Bee's upcoming graduation, the family plans a trip to Antarctica over the Christmas holiday. But as the date approaches, Bernadette disappears, and a more complex story emerges.

The story is told through a series of emails, letters, and other documents. Bernadette initially comes across as just quirky, but deeper issues are soon revealed that challenge the family's overall stability. The "gnats" also prove to be more complex characters than they seem, showing there is always more than one side to any story. The central conflict and its resolution bordered on the preposterous at times, but the light writing style was misleading. Beneath the surface is a novel with surprising emotional impact. show less

“The next thing I knew, he had removed four wisdom teeth and now I can’t go to Antarctica. Here in America, we call that a win-win.”

Bernadette Fox, an award-winning genius architect turned unemployed, agoraphobic, misanthropic introvert, hires an Internet assistant from India to conduct all daily, basic, mundane chores – tasks which she has convinced herself she is no longer capable of performing. Her Microsoft-executive husband, also completely absorbed in his own importance, is show more ignorant of his wife’s “outsourcing” of her life, that is until the Indian assistant, Manjoula, turns out to be neither Indian or a virtual assistant (well, not the kind Fox thinks she has hired). When Bernadette’s daughter, Bee, produces the perfect report card, she declares that her promised reward will be a family trip to Antarctica. In the meantime, Audrey Griffen, a “Mercedes parent” from Bee’s private school, enabler-extraordinaire to her doper son, and neighbour from hell is raising cane (or perhaps raising blackberry bushes would be a better expression). And the plot thickens.

What I Liked: Semple’s humourous portrayal of the complications we’ve laden on previously simple routines in our effort to “make life easier” with advanced technology is spot-on: “Dad tap-tap-tap-tapped across the floor in his bicycle shoes and plugged his heart-rate monitor into his laptop to download his workout.” Bee’s prestigious “grades-erode self-esteem type school” was wonderfully tongue-in-cheek. And the sharp wit aimed at corporate culture also hits its mark.

What I Didn’t Like: Bernadette’s toy chest of anger, envy, childishness, self-absorption, and self-pity were a bit (okay, a lot) too much. I found her over-dramatic, to say the least, and often not as funny as she apparently found herself:

“My intention was never to grow old in this dreary upper-left corner of the Lower Forty-eight. I just wanted to leave L.A. in a snit, lick my considerably wounded ego, and when I determined that everyone felt sufficiently sorry for me, unfurl my cape and swoop in to launch my second act and show those bastards who the true bitch goddess of architecture really is.”

Where’d You Go, Bernadette is not one I will widely recommend, but it is light, quick reading, and Semple does offer some decent humour and satire, so if that’s your pleasure, by all means. show less

This is a story about creative genius, what it needs to stay alive and functioning, and what can happen when that need to create is smothered, its products destroyed. Bernadette Fox was that creative genius, an architect who first built a home out of an old bifocal factory, and then built one using only materials gleaned within a 20 mile radius, green before her time, transforming the most basic of materials into unexpected works of habitable art. She won a prestigious (and valuable) prize show more for the latter home, only to disappear from the face of architecture in the United States when that home was razed to the ground by a crass neighbour.

She and her husband, another certifiable genius who works for Microsoft, moved to Seattle where they settled into a mouldering vast house which had been a former reform school for girls. And this is where the book picks them up. Bernadette suffered several debilitating miscarriages before giving birth to Bee, whose premature birth left her with a heart condition which caused her to turn blue on occasion but whose mind was as finely tuned as either of her parents.

Bernadette is a bona fide introvert who finds human interface difficult and draining. Dealing with the bustling busybodyness of the other school mothers and their tiresome committees is more than she can handle. Her sanctuary is an old Airstream trailer in their backyard. And yet her daughter Bee is her heart and her joy, with the two of them sharing a wonderful relationship. Bee knows that her mother has her back, as she puts it, and she delights in how wonderfully quirky and funny her mother can be. For as anti-social and awkward as Bernadette is in certain situations, she nonetheless has a stellar set of morals and values, is honest and honourable, kind and generous. She just can't deal with the world in large doses.

So when they promise Bee that they will take her to Antarctica for her graduation gift, Bernadette is forced to try to pull things together to make what she knows will be an extremely taxing journey for one of her nature: somewhere in the far corner on the Meyer-Briggs scale of introversion. And of course, she makes some critical errors of judgement along the way, with things going badly pear-shaped as a result.

I don't think it's a spoiler to say that we learn at the end that this book is written by Bee to tell her mother's story. I also don't think it's a spoiler to say that under the occasionally slapstick humour of some of the situations there is a story being told of surprising depth about how people hurt and judge others, about the fragility of creativity, about false gods and real values, and about love having many forms. I thought at first I was reading a light and slightly silly book; by the end its poignancy had won me over.

3.75 stars show less

The title is a mantra we all employ to try to do/be a little better -- the promises we make (and break) in that daily effort to quit bad habits or live life more fully -- a glance at any magazine cover provides a laundry list of ways we fall short. Eleanor is no exception -- in fact, she might be the rule. Her life is a hot mess, mostly of her own making though she is a sympathetic character. If you liked Bernadette, Eleanor is cut from the same cloth of eccentricity and trend-bucking, with show more an artistic temperament (she was an animator of a hit TV show/and could be a graphic novelist -- her actual copy is included here -- nice touch) but is currently suffering upper-middle class malaise in Seattle. Her 8-yr old son Timby (hilarious explanation included in the story) is now her "job," though she is supposed to be writing a memoir, and she is married to Joe, a salt-of-the earth surgeon to the sports stars and a "competent traveler". She shares her life philosophy with Timby: "I don't mean to ruin the ending for you, sweet child, but life is one long headwind. To make any kind of impact requires self-will bordering on madness. The world will be hostile, it will be suspicious of your intent, it will misinterpret you, it will inject you with doubt, it will flatter you into self-sabotage....what the world is more than anything? It's indifferent.....but you have a vision. You put a frame around it. You sign your name anyway. That's the risk. That's the leap. That's the madness: thinking anyone's going to care." (96) Not exactly mother of the year. Most of the action of the book takes place in one madcap day in which a mis-named lunch date sends her past (estranged sister) crashing into her present, as well as revealing a major secret in her marriage of which she was previously unaware. Joe has a "second" life, though it's not what you (or Eleanor) would think. Ultimately, Eleanor gets a shake-up of appreciation for what she has, warts and all ("That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments in between" 108) and is allowed to take the lid off her pressure-cooker past. As a result, tomorrow will be different. Very entertaining and quick read, especially if you take Eleanor with a grain of salt and go along for the ride. show less