WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE?
AUGUST 2012 HARDCOVER
Where’d You Go, Bernadette: A Novel
Maria Semple
978-0-316-20427-9, $25.99
A hilarious and original novel about a family in crisis after the disappearance of its brilliant, misanthropic matriarch.
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly 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 is a best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle—and people in general—has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, and secret correspondence—creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world.
A seasoned comic writer who wrote for Arrested Development and Mad About You, Semple has constructed a wholly original mother/daughter story that recalls the novels of Jennifer Egan, Aimee Bender, and Lorrie Moore.
About the author: Maria Semple garnered nationwide praise for This One is Mine from reviewers and writers like Tom Perrotta, Helen Fielding, and Gigi Levangie Grazer.
Semple lives with her family in Seattle.
Publicity tour: Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle
Publicity contact: Nicole Dewey, nicole.dewey@hbgusa.com
