Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

Where'd You Go, Bernadette tells the story of Bee Branch, a precocious teenager trying to piece together what happened to her brilliant, reclusive mother, Bernadette Fox, after she vanishes just days before a family trip to Antarctica. Told through a patchwork of emails, letters, school memos, and other documents that Bee collects in her search, the novel slowly reveals Bernadette's past as a once-celebrated architect turned isolated, anxious Seattle housewife, unraveling under the pressure of a life that no longer fits her. As Bee digs deeper, the story becomes as much about who her mother used to be as it is about where she's gone.

I went into this one expecting to love it, and in a lot of ways, I did; the satire is sharp, the characters are wonderfully quirky, and the epistolary format made for a genuinely fun, fresh way to tell the story. Bernadette herself is exactly the kind of unlikeable, messy character I usually can't get enough of, and I loved the imperfect, tender family dynamic between her, Bee, and her husband, Elgie. Where the book lost me was the middle; I flew through the first two parts and the last two, but the section in between dragged in a way that made it hard to stay engaged. I never fully lost interest, but I also never quite reconnected with the momentum I'd felt at the start. All told, I landed on 3 stars.

I don't regret reading it, and there's a lot here I genuinely admired, the wit, the structure, the family at its center. I just wish that energy had carried all the way through, because the parts that worked for me worked so well.

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