Every parent has has a moment (or two …) where they think about running from their responsibilities as a mother or father. There is a feeling, especially among parents who are home with their children, that they lose much of themselves. Spending your day with a nonverbal infant or a cranky toddler is enough to make you feel like you don’t always know who you are anymore.
“Where’d You Go, Bernadette” is a darkly comedic look at what happens when one such mother runs from her life.
Bernadette lives in Seattle with her husband, a computer scientist, and their 15-year-old daughter, Bee. Bernadette was once a famous architect but it’s been years since she’s had a project. She barely leaves the house. She has no interest in leaving. Everything outside drives her crazy. She goes so far as to hire an Indian virtual assistant to handle the details of her day to day life.
Much of the story is told from the perspective of Bernadette’s daughter who believes that her mother wouldn’t leave without a good reason. Using flashbacks, emails and random other documents, Bee – and the reader – piece together what happened to make Bernadette run.
“Where’d You Go, Bernadette” is one of my all time favorite books. It’s funny, despite its somewhat dark and sad subject matter. Finding Bernadette is almost secondary to how and why she needs to be found in the first place, which slowly unfolds as the book progresses.
Originally, she famously designed a house in Los Angeles that sourced all of its materials from within a 20-mile radius. Something (which I don’t want to reveal) went wrong between her and a neighbor, leading her family to abandon LA for Seattle.
Bernadette is angry. She’s married to a wildly successful Microsoft employee who gave a popular TED talk and who represents much of what she hates about Seattle. He settles into the ultra healthy Seattle lifestyle while she sits and stews at home. They live in a ramshackle former Catholic school, which could have been the perfect design project, but she never motivates to renovate anything.
Instead she gives into anger about everything: Canadians, people who drive too slowly, the politically correct culture at Bee’s private school. Despite her agoraphobia and crankiness, Bernadette is vivacious and charming.
She has a lovely relationship with Bee, who has her own struggles. Bee faced multiple surgeries to correct a congenital heart defect as a child. All she wants is to take a family trip to Antarctica. This wish leads to Bernadette falling for an internet scam and launching into a dramatic battle with a school parent who lives next door.
Her husband is busy at work and doesn’t pay much attention until matters escalate too much to ignore. That’s when Bernadette flees.
Bee tries to piece together the random information she finds, including police reports and emails, in order to figure out where her mother went. After all, Bernadette would never abandon her daughter forever, right?
“Where’d You Go, Bernadette” is charming and funny and is also a warning to what can happen when brilliant and creative people lose their drive to create. Even if Bernadette is miserable in her life, she is still enchanting and funny, a presence that is remembered fondly long after the cover of the book is closed.
Author Maria Semple has a new book, “Today Will Be Different,” that I haven’t read yet, but it sounds as funny and quirky as Bernadette. Semple is an author I highly recommend and I intend to follow her future literary endeavours.
