Review of: Where'd You Go Bernadette, by Maria Semple

Where'd You go , Bernadette by Maria Semple was published in 2012 by  Little, Brown and Company a division of Hachette Book Group.
The narrator of this book is a little girl nicknamed Bee by her mother, because when Bee was born she has a heart defect and she was blue so her mom Bernadette, thought to name her Balakrishna. This God was blue. Bee is a smart girl who spend more time with her mom than anyone else. The people in her life are her mom-Bernadette, her dad- Elgin, her friend Kennedy. All the other people in her life are the school folks and their moms. Bernadette lovingly calls them gnats. The story is set in Seattle, with flashbacks to a time before Bee was born, provided by letters to a person named Manjula Kapoor and Paul Jellinek from Bernadette.

Everything centers around Bernadette, the gnats are constantly doing things to annoy her and are just mean. One gnat in particular Audrey Griffen even pretends her foot is run over by Bernadette's car to get sympathy from her fellow gnats. Elgin is not around to see any of this because he is ensconced in his Microsoft world trying to make Samantha 2 online for the vets to use. Samantha 2 works by turning on and off things with just a simple thought from the person wearing the headgear. But one of the gnats starts working with him and she idealizes him. She starts putting thoughts into his head about him being abused and they should have an intervention.

This book is about disappearance, see Bernadette removes herself from the public eye as an architect when her baby the Twenty Mile House, is bought and knocked down by her neighbor. She goes into a deep depression and add several Seattle. She buys a school to live in which she  initially intends to revive, but starts dealing with the gnats and well nothing happens with the house. Their is a trip planned for Antartica, which initially Bernadette does not want to go to, she hates people. AN intervention is planned and Bernadette disappears again. The gnat at Elgins office takes advantage of this and gets Elgin to sleep with her, ONCE.

I am not going into all the details, but it was a fun read. I relate to Bernadette in a weird way. When I first moved into my home I was meet with people who really wanted to get into our lives. I am reticent about this and so I did not join Bunko or other things that were supposed to be want the IN moms did. When we first moved to the area we were coming from DC and moving into this small own town on July 4. There was a block party scheduled that they wanted us to come to on the third. That was when our movers were coming, we could not drive 5 hours away for a block party. They never forgave us, we were the outcasts, not born and bred in this city. Things are better, but I definitely identified with Bernadette and just wanting to be able to do my thing without being scrutinized about my  choices.