Betty hosted May's meeting to discuss Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette. This light-hearted spoof of Seattle's keeping-up-with-the-Gateses-mentality was entertaining and fun, but fair warning: not a whole lot of dynamic discussion was fostered by this book!
Brilliant, reclusive Bernadette Fox was an award-winning architect before moving to Seattle and becoming a stay-at-home mom. Through a series of emails, memos, letters, etc., we witness Bernadette's increasingly erratic behavior before her disappearance--right after discovering her husband's affair with his assistant at Microsoft, and right before a family vacation to Antarctica. We had some discussion about the format of the book, which everyone thought contributed greatly to the zany, tongue-in-cheek nature of the novel. Even though we are reading things like Bernadette's email to her assistant in India (don't ask), we don't really feel we are hearing her voice through much of the book, and this in turn contributes to the sense of mystery surrounding her.
Seattle itself plays an important role in the book. Semple skewers the Microsoft culture and paints a picture of a society engaged in constant one-upmanship; somehow, this works to make the complicated, high-strung Bernadette seem not only plausible but actually normal and likable--after all, wouldn't we react this way to the excesses we are reading about?
The book wasn't all satire; the mother/daughter relationship between Bernadette and her daughter Bee tenderly showed them both to be loving, understanding, and protective of one another. This further serves Semple's aim of making Bernadette sympathetic: how could anyone stay sane in such an environment? As Carole commented, "Would I ever live in Seattle after reading it? No!"
Book Club will be taking a break for a few months, and we'll be back in the fall!
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