This was a solid three star book for the first half, but it had me by the end. It’s probably unfair to judge this book so heavily in comparison with another, as if it’s not its own thing, but it’s inescapable for me. Like many people, I absolutely fell in love with Semple’s second novel, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, when I read it back in 2012. My love was perhaps stronger because the book came out of nowhere. I hadn’t been planning to read it, […]
Where’d You Go, Maria Semple
The struggle with enjoying a newer book by an established author, and then going back to their previous works, is your expectations for their debut are high. Halfway through This One is Mine I double checked that this Maria Semple was the same Maria Semple who wrote Where’d You Go, Bernadette. She is. This One is Mine tells the overlapping stories of Violet Parry, her husband David and his sister Sally during a tumultuous time in their lives. David is a multimillionaire record executive and Violet had a successful career […]
“I’m not too good when exposed to people”
Over the summer I cancelled my SiriusXM membership because between borrowing CDs from the library and downloading books off Overdrive I almost always had an audiobook to listen to in the car. Typically, I leave my book listening to the car but not with Where’d You Go, Bernadette? I couldn’t put it down (so to speak) and since it was downloaded onto my phone I didn’t have to. Bernadette went with me to my lunch break at work, while I was cooking and even while I was […]
Satire with a heart
3.5 stars. This is a strange little book. I know a lot of cannonballers have read this and it was so popular that most people will have at least heard of it. It’s been on my TBR for ages and ages honestly. I might not have read it if I’d known it was satire. My preferred satire delivery method is via the screen not the printed word. It makes me uncomfortable to devote several hours to it. Luckily, Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a cross […]
Strong Start, Weak Finish
If not for the humor in the exposition of her epistolary novel, I’d have never read, much less bought Maria Semple’s bestseller, Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2012). A satire of the Seattle-based super rich and privileged, I found myself not liking many of the characters because they typified so many of my stereotypes of the super rich: delusional, entitled, competitive, paranoid, and money/power/status obsessed. Despite my less than positive review, the novel is well-written and stylistically inventive. For these reasons, it gets three rather than two stars. Read […]
I know I’m late, but I really did like it when I finally got round to reading it
Because I read this book a month ago, and the plot is somewhat convoluted, I am resorting to the plot summary from Goodreads to help me explain what the book is about: Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fiercely opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace, to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she’s a best friend, and simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed […]