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.
I wanted to read this because I'd absolutely loved Taffy Brodesser-Akner's first novel, Fleishman is…
I really wanted to read this Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 collection because…
I'm just gonna lead with it -- I think The Murder on the Links is…
Ghost Station, by S A Barnes, is a new space suspense story. The novel's tension…
Dark Tales of Whimsy is a new short fiction collection from Endless Ink Books. I've previously…
The Guardians, a YA scifi novel by John Christopher, was published in 1970 and set…
View Comments
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