Book #11: Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

This was yet another of those books that I saw a lot about on different people's book blogs and in lots of book lists for 2013. I wasn't totally sold on it, but I was trying to pick from the piles of books I have out from the library right now (seriously, I need to work through them fast) and I started this one, and I ended up not being able to put it down! The story is about Bernadette, a former famous architect who's run away from L.A., where she was working, to Seattle with her husband, and become a stay-at-home mom after having a premie baby with a serious heart problem who demanded all of her time for years. This baby has now grown up to be an incredibly smart fifteen-year-old and Bernadette has become an antisocial hermit whose genius has been channeled into huge rants about Seattle and Microsoft and the terrible weather and people who live there. She eventually disappears and her daughter tries to track her down by going through her old emails and documents that might help her find out where she went. The book is made up of those emails sprinkled in with commentary by Bee, her daughter.

I feel like this book was perfect for me. First off, I love epistolary novels, especially ones that have been modernized to today's technology and include emails and IMs and all sorts of fun stuff like that. (I had a huge weakness for a lot of YA romance novels written in that format when I was in high school!) But also, this book was hilarious. It's a huge commentary on Seattle and Microsoft, and although I've never been there, I feel like I can understand a little of what it's like. Some of the characters whose emails you read are just killer; they're so hilarious and puffed-up and full of themselves. And then Bernadette herself is this bitter, angry person who hates them all and basically hates everything except her daughter, and she's so funny in her bitterness and her creative drought that you can't help but love it. One of the quotes on the back of the book (by Jonathan Franzen) says, "The characters in this book may be in real emotional pain, but Semple has the wit and perspective and imagination to make their story hilarious," and I think that is 100% true. It could be a really depressing and pathetic story--about a woman who's lost her creative outlet and is literally withering away in her suburban prison and whose marriage is falling apart--but she makes it funny and gives it a great and happy ending that gives you the hope that things will be better for everyone from here on out. I totally loved this book, and it went by really fast, which felt great.