Categories: BookblrNo but I read it

Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

I got Where’d You Go, Bernadette? in my office’s Secret Santa, from a colleague who knows I like to read. The jacket copy made it sound like generic Busy Wife And Mother fiction, so I had a secret laugh at being perceived as someone who should get a women’s fiction bestseller. I mean, I do like bestsellers, and all the family sagas I LOVE are women’s lit, but I usually feel like an awkward disaster disguised as a responsible adult, especially at work, so being seen as mainstream lady type felt like I’d successfully pulled off my trick.

Well, kinda. This is the story of a woman who ditches her family to hide in Antarctica, a book I started on my flight and then finished in my beachside hut on my solo trip to Hawaii.

This novel starts out being about a Quirky Mom in homogeneous suburbia hellscape, but Bernadette quickly veers from a woman who could not be less interested in school fundraisers or cooking dinners, to a woman whose entire house is falling apart, literally and figuratively. Bernadette goes to the edge of the world, literally and figuratively.

I don’t usually love epistolary novels, because they tend to blend what I dislike in rotating-character POV novels (Are you listening, YA authors? Please stop.) plus what I dislike in unreliable narrators, wrapped up in a gimmicky little box. So I found myself skimming some of the emails, but at least later on Bernadette’s extreme confessions to her assistant and some of the wildest PTA rumors come back in a cleverly over-the-top way, as this totally unpredictable plot comes to a resolution.

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Tina at Mommynificent says:

March 6, 2019 at 6:01 pm

I agree with you about all the things that can go wrong with epistolary novels! But oh, how good they are when they are done right!!! Have you read Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay? It's my favorite epistolary novel ever! Ella Minnow Pea (can't remember the author) is also really good, but much darker.

Thanks for being a part of Booknificent Thursday this month at Mommynificent.com! It's a pleasure visiting your blog!
Tina