![]() ![]() Maria Semple worked in Los Angeles as a television writer for 15 years, working on hit shows including Ellen, Saturday Night Live and Arrested Development. To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence–creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic. 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. ![]() It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. The main characters in Where’d You Go, Bernadette all have their own ways of evading unpleasant realities. The plot revolves around an agoraphobic architect and mother named. 51-page comprehensive study guide Chapter-by-chapter summaries and multiple sections of expert analysis. ![]() 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, Mum. Whered You Go, Bernadette is a 2012 epistolary comedy novel written by Maria Semple. ![]()
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![]() ![]() But the minute he sees London he knows she will require his full attention. Sometimes, he's a ladies' man even when he is dodging them. No matter, after a smothering marriage and three years of straitlaced widowhood, London jumps at the opportunity-unfortunately, right into the arms of Bennett Day.īennett is a ladies' man, when he's not dodging lethal attacks to protect the powers of the ancients from men like London's father. He's said only that he's leading a voyage to the Greek isles. But since London is a mere female, he hasn't bothered to tell her so. London Harcourt's father is bent on subjugating the world's magic to British rule. But this distractingly handsome soldier isn't easy to deceive. Huntley's assistance might come in handy, though she has to keep him in the dark. A good thing, because a proper lady would have no hope of recovering the priceless magical artifact Thalia is after. Raised thousands of miles from England, Thalia Burgess is no typical Victorian lady. Intrigue, danger, and a beautiful woman in distress-just what he needs. And frankly, Huntley couldn't be more pleased. ![]() Gabriel Huntley witnesses in a dark alley sparks a chain of events that will take him to the ends of the Earth and beyond-where what is real and what is imagined become terribly confused. ![]() Zoe Archer’s BLADES OF THE ROSE series-featuring dashing men and fearless women-is finally together in one complete bundle! ![]() ![]() When little Melody Foxglove’s mother complains that Melody cries too much, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle possesses a treasure chest of medicines to treat children’s bad habits-and unlike Ritalin, these cures involve bad trips. Piggle-Wiggle, a childless woman who serves as an unlicensed psychopharmacologist to her suburban neighborhood’s Baby Boomer kids. The books, children’s best sellers from the 1950s that my mother passed to me in the 1980s, are seemingly anodyne stories about the improbably named Mrs. But when I read them to my own children, I was stunned to discover that these silly books are actually horror stories-though for reasons no child could ever comprehend. Piggle-Wiggle books, a series about magic cures for children’s foibles that amazed me as a child. ![]() Recently I came across my old copies of Betty MacDonald’s Mrs. Amid constant unpredictability, one small unsung comfort for parents is the chance to revisit books from childhood, to share with your own children the stories you knew and loved. So much of raising children is unimaginable until it happens, an abstract future materialized awkwardly into an actual child covered in dirt. This article is part of Parenting in an Uncertain Age, a series about the experience of raising children in a time of great change. ![]() |