Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Where’d You Go, Bernadette, published in 2012, is the second novel by Maria Semple, a former television writer who worked on shows such as Mad About You and Arrested Development. A bestseller praised by numerous critics as one of the best books of the year, Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a fast-paced comic novel with a complex narrative structure. The book follows an epistolary format, meaning the text is largely composed of letters, emails, and other found documents. The events of the novel are recounted from multiple points of view by a large cast of characters, employing a wide range of voices and formats. The novel is set in contemporary Seattle and incorporates real places and personalities both in Seattle and beyond.

The novel tells the story of Bernadette Fox, a former architect living in Seattle with her husband, Elgin Branch, an engineer at Microsoft and presenter of a famed TED Talk on artificial intelligence, and their teenaged daughter, Bee. Bernadette, though close to Bee, has become increasingly withdrawn from everyone else, employing a “virtual assistant,” supposedly based in Delhi and named Manjula, to manage her daily life. The family lives in a former school for wayward girls, which Bernadette intended to renovate into a functional family home but which she has instead allowed to fall into ruin. Elgin, immersed in his work at Microsoft, is rarely home.

Bernadette and Elgin moved to Seattle from Los Angeles 20 years earlier, after the unexpected demolition of Bernadette’s most personal project, a residence called the Twenty Mile House, shortly after its completion. Embittered by this turn of events, Bernadette walked away from her career as an architect, even though she had won a MacArthur “genius grant” for her work. In Seattle, Bernadette experienced a series of miscarriages before giving birth to Bee, who was born with a heart defect and not expected to survive. Bee’s full name, Balakrishna, refers to the blue coloring she had as an infant, a consequence of her heart condition. 

Bee attends a small, progressive private school known as the Galer Street School, though for high school she plans to attend Choate, the prestigious east coast prep school once attended by her mother. As a reward for earning perfect grades during her years at Galer Street, Bee has chosen a family trip to Antarctica, unaware of how terrifying this prospect is to her mother.

Galer Street School’s lease on its current premises is set to end, and the school has launched a fundraising drive and a push to attract new, wealthier parents to the school. The central event of this drive is a “Prospective Parent Brunch (PPB),” to be held at the home of Audrey Griffin, a Galer Street parent who lives below the Branches on a steep hillside in the Queen Anne district of Seattle. Audrey, a devout Christian and a leader among the Galer Street parents, has long resented the Branches’ failure to engage with the school community, not to mention their unkempt property. 

Bernadette, unaware of the Prospective Parent Brunch, is angered and surprised when Audrey Griffin demands that the blackberry brambles growing on the Branches’ hillside be removed. Unfortunately, the removal of the blackberries and an epic rainstorm combine to destabilize the hillside and send a mudslide crashing into the Griffins’ house during the brunch. Traumatized by her subsequent confrontation with an infuriated Audrey, Bernadette tells Manjula that there is no way she can travel to Antarctica and plans “emergency” dental surgery as a way out.

Elgin, meanwhile, confused by an incident in which Bernadette tries to acquire a seasickness remedy containing a powerful antipsychotic, has become alarmed over his wife’s mental health and looks into having her committed to a private hospital. Elgin’s fears that Bernadette is out of control only grow worse when he finally learns of the mudslide. Elgin is supported in his attempts to have Bernadette committed by his personal assistant, or “admin,” at Microsoft, Soo-Lin Lee-Segal. Soo-Lin, also a Galer Street parent, is initially a close friend of Audrey’s, but her loyalties shift as she begins to fall in love with Elgin. Elgin’s sense of crisis deepens further when an FBI agent informs him that Manjula, the virtual assistant with whom Bernadette has shared all the family’s information, is the creation of a Russian computer crime syndicate engaged in identity theft.

Elgin stages an intervention intended to force Bernadette into treatment, but which ends with Bernadette disappearing from the house after shutting herself in the bathroom. Elgin is left racked with guilt, especially after he realizes that Bernadette had changed her mind and intended to travel to Antarctica. 

Eventually, a charge on one of Bernadette’s cards reveals that she has travelled to the Antarctic and embarked on the planned cruise alone. Elgin flies to South America to meet the returning vessel, but Bernadette has disappeared yet again. She is presumed dead, having apparently jumped or fallen from the ship after drinking heavily throughout much of the voyage. Elgin is accompanied on this fruitless trip by Soo-Lin, who is now pregnant with his child.

Bee has transferred to Choate midyear at her father’s urging, to escape the turmoil engulfing her family. She receives a mysterious manila envelope containing all the documents included in the earlier part of the book, allowing her to reconstruct the events leading up to her mother’s disappearance. The documents were collected by Audrey Griffin, who has experienced a change of heart after finally realizing the extent of the problems plaguing her own son, Kyle, and deciding to place him in rehab. When Audrey learns of the plan to commit Bernadette, she blames herself for the mudslide and various conflicts surrounding it. She collects the documents to demonstrate her own role in events and to prove that Bernadette is not crazy. She intends to stop the intervention, but instead ends up helping Bernadette escape. Bernadette asks Audrey to ensure that Bee gets the documents. 

Bee, who is convinced her mother is still alive somewhere in Antarctica, feels betrayed when she learns from the documents of her father’s plan to commit her mother and of his infidelity with Soo-Lin. Hoping to reconcile with his daughter, Elgin agrees to take Bee to Antarctica, unaware that she sees the trip largely as a chance to search for her mother. He also quits his job at Microsoft. 

On the voyage to Antarctica, Bee finally comes to accept that her mother may be dead. However, once there, Bee and Elgin realize that Bernadette may have found a way to stage yet another escape. At last, Bee finds Bernadette living at Palmer Station, a scientific research station. Bernadette heard about a construction project at the South Pole, involving the demolition and rebuilding of an existing structure, and decided to find a way to claim the project for her own. Having recovered her passion for architecture, she has been working in Antarctica, unaware that Bee never received the letter explaining her decision, and unaware of the changes that have overtaken her family.