Review: Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple

Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel by Maria Semple
Publisher: Little, Brown, & Co.
Publication Date: August 14, 2012

Aloof and disinterested in socializing, Bernadette Fox is the object of morbid curiosity from her neighbors and the parents at her daughter's school.  Everything gives her a tizzy fit (cold Seattle people, weird design of intersections in Seattle, Idaho drivers, Canadians, etc.) causing trips outside her house to be major ordeal.  Trying to avoid human interactions and the ensuing anxiety leads Bernadette to basically hand over her life to her secret virtual assistant Manjula in India.

Bernadette's husband Elgin Branch works at Microsoft and is the lead on a major project. He is totally absorbed in the Microsoft culture to the detriment of his relationships with his wife and daughter. Her daughter Bee (short for Balakrishna) is 14 years old and small for her age.  They represent the bulk of her non-Manjula communications.  Despite her anxiety issues and irritability, she is a great mom to Bee.  When Bee requests a trip to Antarctica as a reward for excellent grades, Bernadette agrees to having a family vacation.

Everything starts to go to pot when a neighbor accuses Bernadette of running over her foot.  Removing her blackberry bushes at the same neighbors request just results in a fundraiser ruining mudslide.  Add in some alleged shadiness on the part of Manjula and Bernadette starts to slip even further.  Being recognized by a passerby is the icing on the cake.  Elgin, unaware of all the troubles Bernadette is dealing with, starts to fear for her metal health after several strange incidents.  When he holds an intervention, Bernadette bolts. 

Using the accumulated documents, Bee discovers Bernadette's whereabouts and we finally get to here from the lady herself. Bernadette Fox was a innovative designer; she was incorporating environmentally friendly building techniques before they were a thing.  She is a legend in architectural circles for building The Twenty Mile House plan free and entirely from materials sourced from both the sites and locally.  After the incident, Bernadette runs to Seattle and avoids any mention of the Twenty Mile House.  Elgin thinks once Bee is born that all is past but once he starts paying attention he sees her massive issues for the first time.  Despite Bernadette's issues, her help and support allowed him to be the Microsoft absorbed man he was.

Where'd You Go Bernadette is a great novel.  I totally like this book almost 100%.  The characters were well written and crafted with care- even some of the side plots that seemed superfluous were integrated with the rest of the plot. I was so engrossed: it was totally annoying to have to take breaks for work, dinner, socializing, etc. Maria Semple wrote for one of my favorite shows Arrested Development and now one of my favorite books this year. 


**This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.**

 

Title:The Sun's Heartbeat: And Other Stories from the Life of the Star That Powers Our Planet
by Bob Berman
Publisher: Little, Brown, and Co.
Published: July 13, 2011
ISBN: 9780316091015
Pages:304

The Sun's Heartbeat and Other Stories from the Life of the Star That Powers Our Planet is Bob Berman's engrossing biography of the sun.  Chronicling from the creation of the Sun to it's predicted future, The Sun's Heartbeat gives many facts about the Sun previously unknown by the average person.  Examples include:

• Every rainbow is unique to the person viewing it. Two people can never see the same rainbow; One person can never see the same rainbow twice.
• The sky is really violet but on that end of the color spectrum, our eyes easily perceive the blue.  Hence, we see blue skies.
• Our eyes are designed to see the color green.  Green is the last color the human eye can see in the dark.
• Shockingly contrary to everything we've been told, sunblock might be more of a con than a pro due to the reduction of vitamin D production in its wearers.

From the cataclysmic events that led to the sun's creation to the wacky behavior of the sun in recent, we see how the sun has shaped human civilization and continues to affect our daily life.  It's really startling to see the progression of sun science from ancient temples designed for various equinoxes and eclipse viewing to people being harassed for espousing doctrine that varied from the Church's stance on the Sun, its origins, and its relation to earth.  We seemingly have made a loop recently from massive gains in our knowledge of the sun to the denial by many of global warming even with vast and mounting evidence.  (Yes, it exists even though many places had brutal winters recently.  Most of our temperature gain will be during the winter nights when most people aren't awake or outside to tell the difference.)

For us amateur sky observers, Berman details the varied solar events (eclipses - full and partial, rainbows, diffraction, aurora borealis, etc. and how to observe some of these.  He also includes a handy list of solar eclipses in case the reader wants to see one. 

This book is right up my alley with all the random cool and strange facts about our Sun.  If you are a science fan or enjoy learning about new things, this is a great book for you.  Bob Berman was able to explain pretty complex science in understandable language.  He uses sources from various cultures not just European to show the way earthlings have dealt with the sun and used it to develop cultures (some ancients using their knowledge of eclipses and such to lord it over other less advance cultures).  He gives plenty of evidence of the whole global warming phenomena that explains the cold winters/moderate summer in many place.  Get this book to increase your solar awareness.

**This book was provided by the publisher Little, Brown, and Co. in exchange for my honest opinion.**