Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Maria Semple, 2012
Bernadette Fox, a highly successful, intelligent architect turned reclusive shut-in, disappears from her Seattle home after the stress of planning a promised trip with her family to Antarctica. Her daughter, Bee, refuses to give up on her mother and begins to piece together e-mails, notes, newspaper articles, invoices, and other scattered documents to determine not only where her mother might be, but what might have driven her to escape.
I enjoy epistolary novels in general, and I thought that this take on it - using documents instead of letters - was a really interesting way of doing it. I was surprised how funny it was, too, since the topic doesn't seem like it would lead itself to a whole lot of laughs. There were some very humorous situations, though, and I found the character of Soo-Lin hilarious. And while I didn't really love or identify with any of the characters (maybe Bee, a little bit), I did really enjoy hearing their stories.
I enjoy epistolary novels in general, and I thought that this take on it - using documents instead of letters - was a really interesting way of doing it. I was surprised how funny it was, too, since the topic doesn't seem like it would lead itself to a whole lot of laughs. There were some very humorous situations, though, and I found the character of Soo-Lin hilarious. And while I didn't really love or identify with any of the characters (maybe Bee, a little bit), I did really enjoy hearing their stories.
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