[amazon_link id=”0316204269″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]Title : Where’s You Go Bernadette
Author : Maria Semple
Genre : Contemporary
Narrators : Kathleen Wilhoite
Publisher : Hachette Audio
Listening Length : 9 hrs 39 min
Source : Library
Rating : 4/5

Where’d You Go Bernadette (WYGB here onwards) is an epistolary novel – i.e.; instead of following the regular narrative structure, it is narrated via a series of documents – in this case via emails, letters, notes, text messages, journals and magazine articles. The omniscient “narrator” who threads everything together for our consumption is Bee Branch, 15 year old precocious daughter of fed-up Seattle housewife Bernadette Fox and Microsoft rock star Elgin Branch. The three live-in a rambling, worn-down, schoolhouse-turned-home on a hill, overlooking the sea.

Bernadette has major anxiety issues, can’t stand being hemmed in by people, and has an aversion to the annoying moms (gnats she calls them) who clog the neighborhood. There is a mysterious past hinted at (a really bad thing she says it was), but for now Bernadette has her hands full just anticipating a planned trip to Antartica, where she will be cooped in with a ship-ful of people, and subject to massive motion sickness. Happy-go-lucky Bee, who’s really named BalaKrishna because she was a little blue baby when she was born, is looking forward to graduating from her current school Galer Street, and and continuing on to her chosen, elite school Choate Rosemary. Bee’s dad, Elgin, meanwhile is super-busy with the new Samantha2 project at Microsoft and barely ever home, and when he is, doesn’t seem too happy with Bernadette’s seemingly erratic behavior. Things come to a head when Bernadette goes missing. Rumor has it that she either committed suicide or accidentally drowned, but Bee knows that her loving mom couldn’t have left her, could she?

Now my last audiobook, Gone Girl, had a missing wife too, but these two books are very different in genre. Where Gone Girl was a psychological thriller, WYGB is a “relationship” book – the story of a modern family of smart, intelligent people subject to the wear and tear of this overbearing world. The story is told in seemingly disjointed snippets : Bernadette’s emails to her virtual assistant Manjula Kapoor in India, letters from Bee’s future boarding school to Elgin Branch, and emails between two Galer Street moms Audrey Griffin and Soo-Lin Lee-Segal. So the information is delivered in little pieces and filtered through other people’s point of views; it is up to reader to put them all together and make up his/her mind.

This is a many textured story with varied, far-flung characters – from Bernadette’s pushy neighbor and her “blackberry abatement specialist”, to various Aussie/Nordic characters on the Antartica-bound ship, to intervention-staging psychiatrists and various members of the police/FBI. It is to Semple’s credit that she manages to paint in all these people in just the right hues, not too little and not too much, just enough to keep us interested. Bernadette herself comes across as an eccentric genius, someone so smart that she is a little incomprehensible to the ordinary people around her. Her character has her faults, but is imbued with sharp, wry humor and the ability to laugh at herself. I liked both her and Bee and loved the way Semple developed their loving mother-daughter bond. Elgin’s character seemed a little inconsistent or maybe that’s just me being naive.

Bernadette didn’t seem the easiest person to get along with but narrator Wilhoite gives her good grace and humor. She also managed to convey the beautiful relationship between the irascible Bernadette and the smart, quirky Bee. Wilhoite delivers Bee to us in childish breathy tones, tones it down for Elgin Branch, and make it believably high-pitchy-sarcastically-irate for Bernadette in one of her moods. And then there are the accents – the British, the Kiwi, the Nordic etc. – all very well done. This book is Semple’s baby but I have to say it enjoyed it all the more because of the fabulous narrator.

WYGB is funny and moving and a little poignant. It details out all the little ways we are so fragile that we grasp at the small happinesses and never want to let go, not wanting to believe that we’ll get any more, or even that we deserve them. This was a lovely book; I highly recommend it.