Today I did my least favorite chore: pulling weeds.Why is that essential? Because it means I finally finished Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette yesterday and stopped procrastinating things that really matter.
It was terrible.
Not the book, the working.
The story is about 15 year old Bee whose mother, Bernadette Fox, has disappeared. The first half of the book is a collage of letters, e-mails, FBI files, and blurbs told by Bee leading up to the event of her mother's disappearance. I really enjoyed this method of story telling. The characters are quirky (that's the nice way of saying crazy) and believable. Rather than one biased and unreliable narrator you see how each character talks, how they think.
Bee is a 15 year old in every sense of the age. There is no doubt. She talks like a teenager, acts like a teenager, pouts like a teenager, and gets hopeful and excited like a teenager. There is nothing more annoying than reading a book in which the characters personality just doesn't fit their facts. Semple doesn't suffer from this inconsistency.
Despite the fact that Bee is an endearingly off kilter teenager the book doesn't ever become overwhelmingly juvenile due to the other media present.
The characters all seem to develop over the course of the story arc. Though some of the development does seem a little cliche, it is not so much that it takes you out of your reading. The narrative is not particularly deep and you won't come out of the story contemplating life's great mysteries, but you will laugh. The book is, simply put, adorable. Oh, there are some dark themes, but they are so overlayed by personality and quirk that the book itself never seems dark.
The book isn't overly long, I finished it in 5 days. I think you will thoroughly enjoy Where'd You Go, Bernadette. It is definitely worth the $8.47 it costs for Kindle or $8.99 for a paperback.
I am going to look in to other good reads and I hope to have a new book chosen by tomorrow morning. Keep your eyes peeled!
Let me know what you thought of Where'd You Go, Bernadette or whether you plan to read it below!
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