Maria Semple, WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE?

After reading STATION ELEVEN about a pandemic and a dystopian world, I was in the mood for something lighter. So I picked up this book because the cover promised it was "divinely funny" and I would "laugh [my] pants off." I do love a good laugh!

Alas, I found this book painful (though engaging) for the first 2/3 and disappointing for the remainder. I almost felt as though I'd watched a funny trailer and then realized, watching the movie, that the only three funny moments in the movie were in the trailer.

[Spoiler alert] The protagonist, Bernadette, was once a brilliantly talented practicing architect in LA. She won a MacArthur Grant and built her bold, original dream house, which was first undermined and then purchased and bulldozed by the rich white man next door. Humiliated and discouraged, she moves to Seattle, where her husband is a bigwig at Microsoft, and she remains unemployed. She endures a number of miscarriages. Finally she succeeds in carrying her daughter Bee to term, but Bee has numerous health issues, which are a source of worry for years. Bernadette never fits in or makes friends in Seattle. Eventually her husband tries to have Bernadette involuntarily committed to an institution, so he can cheat on her with his admin.

So ... I didn't find this plot "divinely funny." Granted, Audrey Griffin the horrid next-door neighbor (think Mrs. Kravitz of BEWITCHED) is a caricature. Certain episodes are absurd--the mudslide into Audrey's house, for example, which is in a way satisfying because Audrey is so awful she deserves it. The writing is clear and often wry, which makes it an "easy read" and is perhaps why some readers called it "breezy."

Part of the difficulty for me is that the (sometimes satirical) first 2/3 of the book presents characters with psychological complexity; the last 1/3 is absurdly insta-fix, with the emotional issues magically and comically resolved. The quarrelsome, depressed, erratic woman goes to Antarctica and immediately becomes nurturing and wise and good-humored. In one day, the embittered daughter matures and precociously achieves insight about her parents, instantly forgiving them their errors. The pregnant admin is made to look utterly stupid and then pushed out of the story. There is nothing difficult or complex about the resolutions, which leads me to believe we're not to take them seriously. So I'd say the book first made me wince at a middle-aged woman's pain and then made me shrug, as I lost my emotional connection to the characters.

It occurs to me that this has some aspects of a Gothic novel (as in 18th-century and some 19th-century novels), in which a woman is abused by men in power. (Think of how Mr. Rochester stuck Bertha Mason in the attic and tried to seduce Jane Eyre.) The modern twist is that it is told in emails, letters, and faxes. Although a woman is at the novel's center, it is perhaps the most anti-feminist book I've read in a long time. I know there are tons of people who enjoyed both the book and the movie. It just wasn't to my taste.