Post 10: Book 3 Review

Book 3 Book Review
 

Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple

Room by Emma Donoghue

Where'd You Go Bernadette:
Bernadette Fox (an antisocial, fiercely opinionated ex-architect) disappears from thin air... almost literally. Bernadette’s best friend, her practically genius 15-year old daughter Bee, will not rest until she is found. This all started when Bee asked to take a family trip to Antarctica after acing all of her classes. Bee is the perfect daughter and her parents could not deny her this wish. After this Bernadette begins acting strange, like falling asleep in public parks and spending all her time emailing her personal assistant who lives in India. Not understanding her actions, Bernadette’s husband, Elgin Branch, decides it is time for an intervention to get her help. During this intervention was when Bernadette disappeared in her own home. After extensive searches, Elgin just accepts that Bernadette must be dead (probably got too drunk and threw herself overboard) and Bee seems to be the only person who won't accept that her mother is gone.

Strengths & Weaknesses:
Where'd You Go Bernadette is written in documents and letters sent from person to person. This set-up of the novel keeps the reader on their feet when they are reading.

However, because the novel is written in letters when a new character is introduced it can take a while until you figure out how that character is and what connection they have to the story. This is because the character does not come out and say who they are in the letter; you have to connect all of the documents and letters.

Room:
Room is written from the perspective of a 5-year old boy who has never seen anything other than what is in Room. Whatever Jack sees on TV, he doesn't believe it's actually real (e.g. grass, dogs, etc.). Old Nick comes to bring Sunday Treat and "make the garbage disappear" but even Jack isn't sure if Old Nick is real. Jack's mom was kidnapped when she was 19 years old by Old Nick. Old Nick was Jack's father.
Strengths & Weaknesses:
This enitre book was creatively written from the perspective of a 5-year old boy, therefore the language of the book is that of a young child. When talking to his mother one morning Jack said, "Not-when you're on at the same time I'm off" (Donoghue 4). (By "on" and "off", Jack means being awake and asleep.)

This link takes you to see Jack's handwriting
http://www.roomthebook.com/inside/about-the-book/



On her website Emma Donoghue described how she went about creating the language for the book, "Just as in previous novels I put together a mini-dictionary of how people spoke in 1788 or 1864, this time I made myself a dictionary of my son’s kid-English, then narrowed it down to some classic errors and grammatical oddities that would not seriously confuse readers" (Donoghue). http://www.roomthebook.com/inside/why-and-how/
By writing the book from Jack's perspective, the reader truly gets a sense of how innocent Jack is and how big the world seems from his eyes.
However, by the book being written from Jack's perspective, the reader only knows what Jack knows. This can lead to confusion throughout the book.

 

Room vs. Where'd You Go Bernadette:

These two books are completely different genres, but at the same time they also have many similarities. Room is literary fiction with elements of suspense while Where'd You Go Bernadette is a comedy. Being two completely different genres does not stop these book from having significant similarities.

• Even though the two books are completely different genres they both have the similar plot line: someone going missing. In Room, Ma goes missing because she was kidnapped by Old Nick. In Where'd You Go Bernadette, Bernadette went missing after an intervention.
• Bee and Jack are also very similar characters (Both being the protagonists). Although both characters come from completely different places and have completely different backgrounds, they do have their similarities. Both characters are very intelligent for their age and both characters have a strong and indescribable connection to their mothers. In Where'd You Go Bernadette, Bee is determined to find her mother and will not believe that she is dead. Responding to her dad, Bee says about her mother, "She was my best friend" (Semple 287).

Is and Is Not's:
Room was not a story of Old Nick's evils or terrible actions, but it was the story of Ma and Jack pushing through the terrible conditions he put them through and joining the rest of society and their family. On her website, Emma Donoghue even stated, "It was not Old Nick's evil that fascinated me, but the resilience of Ma and Jack: the nitty-gritties of their survival, their trick of more or less thriving under apparently unbearable conditions."

Where'd You Go Bernadette is not a story of Bernadette's craziness but a story of the power of a mother-daughter relationship.