A heartwarming satirical look at the upper crust of the Emerald City, housed in a mystery: an analysis of where did you go Bernadette by Maria Semple

Hello again, agents. Today, I thought we would discuss the book that resonates with the Pacific Northwest and or Cascadian way of life. Even if it is a satirical residence, where did you go Bernadette by Maria Semple is a wonderful satirical glimpse into the Pacific Northwest and the lifestyle of the people that make their home here (specifically the upper middle class). The best part is that all this satire is couched within a wonderful mystery. Not only that but they characters are developed in such a way that anyone familiar with the Pacific Northwest can identify and sympathize with Bernadette and bee.

And yes agents I am fully aware that this book came out in 2012, and it is now 2017. However, I feel that this is one of those books that every Pacific North westerner or and/or Cascadian should read at least once, if not find a permanent place on their bookshelf for. As it will make you smile with most every turn of the page and crosses boundaries of gender or age, income levels, etc. and provides an interesting and somewhat sideways view of life in the Emerald City, which makes it the perfect companion for a rainy Sunday morning in a favorite coffee shop...

The book’s magic is multi-fold. Satire often relies on caricature to reflect life’s absurdities, missing the irony that life is so freaking absurd all by itself, there’s no need for a novel to dump on its characters by making them freaks, as well. Semple gives us real people in real time, setting the horizon slightly a-tilt so your balance is off but you aren’t stumbling like a drunk. She blends the bizarre with moments of grace and clarity that reveal the depth of her characters and her themes. Humor works best when it pokes at our most vulnerable spots and shows us that everyone else has those spots, too.

The narrative is laid out in a series of e-mails, letters, articles, police reports, TED talk transcripts and department memos written by a cast of adult characters, but the primary point-of-view is delivered in traditional third-person. And this voice belongs to thirteen-year-old Bee, the tiny (congenital heart defect) daughter of Microsoft exec Elgin Branch and his wife, Bernadette. Bernadette, around whom this story foams and eddies, is a once-celebrated architect and a now-wiggy recluse. The contrast of correspondence and detached transcript versus a child’s perspective is a brilliant technique: the adults talk at one another, while the purest, most reliable character addresses the reader directly.

Semple’s spoofs are fun-house mirror reflections of layers of upper-middle class American society: oversharing to strangers via the save-face format of e-mail and social media (the exchanges between Bernadette and her $.75/hour personal assistant Manjula, who is based in India, are screamingly funny); the obsession with work and achievement (woe to Microsoft, whose culture is skewered and roasted like a vegan hotdog on a gas grill); dogmatic liberalism –Bee splutters her outrage towards her private school:

“Their class was studying China, and the debate was going to be pro and con Chinese occupation of Tibet. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Galer Street is so ridiculous that is goes beyond PC and turns back in on itself to the point where fourth graders are actually having to debate the advantages of China’s genocide of the Tibetan people, not the mention the equally devastating cultural genocide.

This is one bright kid and one whacked-out progressive school.

And then there is Seattle. I read an interview last year in which Maria Semple admitted this book was her rant on all that drove her batty about “this dreary upper-left corner of the Lower Forty-eight” shortly after she moved here; now that she’s been here awhile, she can’t imagine living anyplace else.

But there is no malice in her observations (okay, maybe just a wee bit toward Microsoft, but we all revile the place and anyway, it’s not in Seattle); instead, the author works her magic yet again, nailing dead on the bull’s eye all that makes Seattle maddening and lovely. Although the social strata she spoofs could exist anywhere in America’s wealthier reaches, the details she provides are so crazy-true I caught myself gasping with an insider’s recognition. Elgin’s “bike-riding, Subaru-driving, Keen-wearing alter ego…”? Umm… guilty. Molly Moon’s Salted Caramel ice cream? Jesus. I dream of the stuff. Cliff Mass Weather Blog? The house goes silent at 9 a.m. every Friday so I can listen to Cliff’ prognostications for the week ahead. I can hear his baritone in every syllable of Semple’s transcript.

The five-way intersections? Oh. I know EXACTLY where the author (and Bernadette) lost her mind on Queen Anne (though no one calls it Queen Anne Hill, just so’s you know). Yes, they lurk everywhere throughout our fair city. The Microsoft Connecter? I know it waited every morning on 45th in Wallingford for the express purpose of pulling out in front of me as I raced to beat the next light, Daniel’s Broiler on Lake Union? I always wondered who ate there. If anyone I know has, they aren’t admitting it. Blackberry bushes, the Westin, rain? Check, check, check. Bernadatte rants to a former colleague:

“What you’ve heard about the rain: it’s all true. So you’d think it would become part of the fabric, especially among the lifers. But every time it rains, and you have to interact with someone, here’s what they’ll say” “Can you believe the weather?” And you want to say “Actually, I can believe the weather. What I can’t believe is that I’m actually having a conversation about the weather.”

The city, and Bernadette’s reactions to it, are part of the web that bears the weight of Semple’s heavier themes: a lost sense of self, depression, isolation and anxiety. That she can hold it all together with such a deft hand at slapstick comedy without being cruel is yet another form of magic.

The plot twists are genius. For Bernadette is not lost just in a metaphorical sense. Semple takes us on a cruise to Antarctica and the book’s title becomes a call that echoes in the blue glaciers of this frozen continent. Hang on – you might get a little seasick as you try to keep up, but it’s so worth the ride.

Maria Semple has written a crazy-good, original, hilarious, sweet and tender novel about a woman falling apart. I think I saw that woman sitting in the window of Starbucks on the corner of Queen Anne Avenue and Boston last winter, laughing to herself. It was raining pretty hard, so I can’t be certain it was she. Maybe it was just a reflection of my imagination.

As always, agents please remember that "reading is just recreation for intelligence."

A great Emerald City ghost story: a literary analysis of the ravine by Nick DiMartino.

Hello again, agents. And thank you for attending today's briefing today, we are going to be analyzing a piece of literature that probably won't add to your personal growth. Mental everyday skills or polarizer political opinions, today we will be discussing a book by Nick DiMartino which is: the ravine, a Seattle ghost story, and in case you wondering why we're analyzing this particular book. The answer is pretty simple. It was simply a book that I read while on vacation for two weeks in Montana (rather I should say  read and/or listen to in the car. I had both the audio narration and the electronic book burning simultaneously. So I could read for a while, and when my eyes got tired, I could simply just listen...

Such a great book to read when you live in Seattle! I don't live too far from where this story takes place. The environment I live in enhances the book, and the book enhances the environment.

This ghost story started out a little bit slowly for me, but Nick DiMartino does an excellent job of developing real characters that you come to know and sympathize with. Aside from a good ghost story, I loved the various threads that the author wove into this book; religion, family, self-identity, love, homosexuality, parent-child relationships. It was a book that went deeper than what it seemed on the surface, and that made it more satisfying to read.

I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed with the narration done by Cameron Beierle. He wasn't a bad narrator, but sometimes the emotion that should have been present in his voice was absent or sometimes not quite the right pitch. There was often calmness in his voice when there should have been more panic, or a softness when there should have been more sharpness. I also noticed that these Seattleites had slight New York accents given to them by Beierle. This was an odd choice, I thought, because as far as I could tell from the story, these characters were not from New York. Additionally, a New York accent just isn't something that we hear all that often way out here on the opposite coast in Seattle, so it did stick out to me, and it slightly distracted me. Overall, though, the narration was just fine, and the story was entertaining.

As always, agents please remember "reading is just recreation for intelligence."


PS I've been reading a lot of Seattle-based books lately, so please don't be surprised if the next few analysis are based in that particular city or the Pacific Northwest. By the way my opinion a few care. I would have given the book 4 stars. The story was a little weak in certain areas, and as I say, the narrator’s voice was a little lacking in certain parts of the story. However, as agents, you can judge the story on its own merits and your own opinions.