“Where’d You Go, Bernadette” by Maria Semple

Sam suggested that I should read something I knew I would enjoy for my birthday weekend. I think he meant that I should re-read something I had enjoyed in the past, but I preferred to pick something new. There’s always the risk that I would end up choosing a clunker, but really—with so many books and so little time—I would rather try a new book (and not like it) than do a re-read. Especially considering the possibility that the re-read wouldn’t live up to my memory of it!

This book totally worked for me. It was a lot of fun. Not necessarily a book that invited deep thought, but it was engaging and a pleasure to read. The only problem was that I finished it before the end of my birthday weekend!  

There was a lot of chatter about Bernadette in the blogosphere when this book first came out, but I'm nearly a decade behind the times by reading it in 2021. In case you missed it the first time around too (AND missed the 2019 Cate Blanchett movie), here's the story: Bee Fox is a highly intelligent young teenager about to finish middle school in Seattle. Remembering a promise they'd made years before based on her perfect grades, Bee's parents offer her anything she wants as a reward, and she chooses (of all things) a family trip to Antarctica, despite the fact that her mother (the titular Bernadette) is basically agoraphobic and really only leaves the house to get Bee to and from school. After a series of unfortunate events and before embarking on the planned voyage, Bernadette disappears. The story is told in a compilation of emails and a variety of other notes that Bee is collecting to try to figure out just exactly what happened. 

By now you know I'm one of those weird people who reads every single word in a book (ok, well, maybe I skip most of the colophon). So it should be no surprise to you that I read all the advance praise found in this book even though there were a dozen pages of it (or at least four). The odd thing is that almost every line claimed that this book was laugh out loud funny. I'm here to say no, it was not. I will agree that it was amusing and mostly light-hearted, but I'm pretty sure not a single giggle escaped me as I read, and that's not because I was intentionally keeping my giggles prisoner. Just trying to temper your expectations. You may smile on the inside as you read this book, but I won't promise that you'll laugh out loud.