Our Book Editor, Claire Rorke selected “Where’d you go, Bernadette’ as our Book of the Week.
Her review:
Bernadette Fox is a woman like no other. To Elgie Branch, she’s his prodigiously talented but troubled wife; to teenage whiz-kid Bee she’s a loving mother and best friend; to her neighbours and fellow parents at the school gate, she’s a nuisance; and to a generation of architects, she’s a fallen genius.
Intelligent, opinionated and eccentric, Bernadette is convinced of her own exceptionality – and of the utter ridiculousness of the world around her.
Living in her family’s leaky, draughty, dilapidated home, Bernadette is a shadow of her younger self – when, for a brief, glorious moment, she was the rising star of the architecture world. After sinking further and further into an isolated hole, Bernadette suddenly disappears, seemingly without a trace, leaving her daughter devastated – and determined to bring her home. By searching through her mother’s emails and a cache of documents and correspondence, Bee soon uncovers Bernadette’s secret world. Where’d You Go, Bernadette is former TV writer Maria Semple’s second novel – and what a beauty it is. The pages are laced with the author’s irreverent sense of humour – honed on the set of TV comedies Mad About You and Arrested Development – with plenty of wry one-liners. Bernadette is a more complex – more real – character than you will find in many novels. Frustrating, ridiculous and utterly charming all at the same time, you can’t help but want the best for her. The plot is slow to unfold and, be warned, the writing style can be a little bewildering at first, but ultimately it’s that originality which makes Where’d You Go, Bernadette enjoyable – and worthy of your winter to-read list.
Claire Rorke
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