Where’d You Go, Bernadette

by Maria Semple

Amazon Prices:

Paperback: $16.99

Hardcover: $31.99

Kindle: $7.99 (Not available on Kindle Unlimited)

Audible: $11.96 (Not available on Kindle Unlimited)

Before Reading Facts:

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple was published in 2012 by Back Bay Books.

Page Count: 352 pages (paperback) 487 (hardcover) 335 (Kindle)

Audiobook length: 09 hours 35 minutes

Chapters: N/A (Book is not divided into numbered chapters)

Languages: English (also available in the following translation: Spanish) 

Summary of Book:

“When fifteen-year-old Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, her fiercely intelligent but agoraphobic mother, Bernadette, throws herself into preparations for the trip. Worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Bernadette is on the brink of a meltdown. As disaster follows disaster, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces. Which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together emails, invoices, and school memos to reveal the secret past that Bernadette has been hiding for decades. Where’d You Go, Bernadette is an ingeniously entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are, and the power of a daughter’s love for their imperfect mother.” -Back Bay Books

Author Biography:

“Maria Semple is the author of the novels This One Is Mine; Where’d You Go, Bernadette, which has been translated into eighteen languages; and Today Will Be Different. She lives in Seattle.” -Back Bay Books

Book Review:

Overall Book Rating: ★★★★★ / ★★★★★

I read this book for the Livre D’Amour book club. I was fairly open to reading something different, and this book seemed like it would be that something. I read the book summary before diving in and was interested in the story. I didn’t know much about the novel or what others were saying before reading because I did not want what others thought to sway my reading experience. After getting through about half of the novel, I could kind of guess that this is one of those books where people either loved or hated. I, myself, was on the fence. I kept myself judgement-free for as long as possible.

Once I started reading this novel, I realized the setup was new to me. The way Semple portrayed this story was very interesting. The story relies a lot on email conversations and interactions between multiple characters. This was not a novel I could listen to while doing something else as I have a tendency to do. I had to maintain my attention on the story or else I would get lost. However, I did not have trouble with the story’s layout. I actually really enjoyed it. I enjoyed Semple’s interesting story-telling and was really happy I got to see a different way of writing a novel.

I guess one negative thing I have to say about this novel is the whole “where’d you go” part of the title. Even in the book summary, the whole “Bernadette disappeared” originally caught my attention, and I wanted to know about her disappearance and if the main character figures out what happened to her. However, I was fairy disappointed that this novel was not much of a mystery as I had originally thought. Bernadette was present for about sixty-five percent of the novel that I just had to question when she would indeed disappear. By the time she did, I had already lost interest and simply read the story to contribute to the book club. This is not a bad story. I think the fact that I thought this was going to be more of a mystery gave me false expectations, and since it did not go as I thought, I quickly lost interest in what was going on.

Audible Review:

Narration Rating: ★★★★★ / ★★★★★

Narration by Kathleen Wilhoite

Wilhoite does an amazing job capturing the sarcasm and sassyness of the characters. Her narration made the story interesting. I have not read many novels written in the way this one was written in, but the way Wilhoite applies a different voice for each character allowed me to follow this story with ease. I did have to read at more than a 1.25 speed. 1.0 speed was too slow for me. At 1.25 speed, Wilhoite’s narration is about the speed I read, and is about normal conversational speech speed. For those of us who like to multitask and listen on the go, I recommend listening at a 1.75 speed, so one does not miss anything. For those who are listening while reading the book, I found 2.0 and 2.5 speed to be the best speeds. 3.0 and 3.5 speed was too fast for me, and I was missing a lot of what the narrator was saying and had to eventually slow down the narrator’s reading speed. 

Other works by this Author:

Novels

• This One Is Mine
• Today Will Be Different