PositiveThe Pittsburgh Post-GazetteIn former TV writer Maria Semple's new novel, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, the central character is Bernadette Fox, a once-promising architect ... Bernadette is as destroyed as her masterpiece ... Bernadette spends her days avoiding her maids and gardeners to shop on the Internet from the backyard Airstream trailer Bee calls the Petit Trianon after Marie Antoinette's Versailles getaway ... She vanishes. The adoring Bee persuades her father to help her seek Bernadette to the ends of the Earth: Antarctica ... Yes, a few lives and careers are wrecked. (Elgie's affair with his secretary felt too dark for this plot.) But that's the price of loving a genius, the author seems to say. Worth every embarrassment and heartache ... Ms. Semple's writing is deft but not enough to make this fact funny ...a constructive read for those convinced they're too brilliant for this world. But then again, maybe not.
