Reviews with content warning for Panic attacks/disorders - Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Reviews tagging 'Panic attacks/disorders'

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

5 reviews

emeraldjulep's review against another edition

fast-paced

4.0

This book kept me laughing. I was pretty much the target audience at the time I read it, so it was very relatable to me. Also it’s set in Seattle which I know well and boy does she do a good job with parodying the characteristics of a PNW mom of the time. A good palate cleanser with a darker emotional understory, but uplifting nonetheless. (The movie was awful and drained all humor from the story -skip it).

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meganpbennett's review

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? is a book that's incredibly hard to rate. It's... a mediocre book about a family you hate from the get go. Bee, the daughter, is not a nice person, and it shows throughout the entire story. Bernadette herself suffers from a horrific experience while trying to build the Twenty Mile House, one which people told her to dust herself off and get back on the horse, all the while ignoring what happened. Then she moved to Seattle, and wasted away in a house that was literally falling apart around her ears. The sort of falling apart where it's a miracle social services hasn't been called.

The novel isn't exactly as described, since a third of the story takes part before the family trip to Antarctica, and it's a little hard to follow, at first, since it's only later revealed that it's Bee creating the story from a dossier she received about the few weeks before Bernadette disappears, causing the perspective to drastically change and the reliability of the narrator to shift from 'unreliable' to 'complete fiction'.

However, that's what makes this book work, and the fact that we lose that shifting, epistolary story exactly when Bernadette disappears, thoroughly weakening the last 50-100 pages, and causing it to lose a star.

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sinceslicedbread's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I really enjoyed all of the moving parts of this book.

My only complaint is the ending. I think Sue Lynn getting pregnant was unnecessary and left a lot to be desired at the end. How would this affect the characters’ relationships?

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mateoj's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I think the main selling point for this story is the way it's told partially via emails, notes, articles, etc ; I'm a sucker for that trope. Unfortunately, Where'd You Go, Bernadette falls victim to the classic pratfall of that trope, which is that the characters write unrealistically long and prosaic emails and letters in order to get the narrative across. This grated on my nerves throughout the novel, but I have to admit that it was fun to read nonetheless. The story itself... equal parts entertaining and infuriating. The only character I found remotely tolerable and redeemable was Bee; everyone else sucked, especially Bernadette herself. All I really saw in her was a very mentally ill woman who was unhealthily attached to her child and had an incredible amount of sheer dumb luck. The answer to the title question should really have been "therapy"—but rhen, of course, there would be no story.

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waytoomanybooks's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I went into the book not knowing what to expect, which made it all the more fun to read! There were a lot of interesting twists that I can honestly say that I didn't see coming. I think all of the characters were fascinating messes of flaws and virtues, which made all the more invested in their stories. It kept me guessing, and it made me keep turning the pages!

I should explain why I gave it a 3 out of 5 rating (in no particular order): I think the ending was rushed and a tad sloppy. And there are a few loose ends I would've liked seen tied up

(like Soo-Lin's baby!?)

. There was also a completely unnecessary Christian bent to it that got shoved into the narrative in the last quarter of the book. And also some casual racism and hatred against the poor and the homeless that jarred me out of the narrative on more than one occasion. Also, the whole

Russian mafia angle was never brought up after the intervention. Surely they couldnt just go about unaffected by the fact that their identities/SSNs, addresses, and account numbers, etc. were stolen?

.

It was an enjoyable read, but it definitely needed another round of edits.

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