Where'd you Go Bernadette    By: Maria Semple

If the whole book is about finding Bernadette I might as well write about why she left, right? There are so many logical reasons that only if you read the book you would understand. Bernadette has a crazy life and in these five reasons, her adventures are summed up in a few sentences.
5 reasons Bernadette left:

1. She couldn't handle the pressures of her "psychological issues"
Elgin, Bernadette's husband, decided to figure out what was going wrong with her because she was acting so distant and bizarre. Elgin decided to get the detectives, FBI and Dr. Kurtz involved in order to send Bernadette to a treatment facility to help her. Bernadette doesn't know her husband has been planning an intervention for a few weeks and when he finally decides to put the plan in action. Bernadette is startled by this quick interaction "Do what here? I don't like this. I'm leaving," (219 Semple). Bernadette is asked many questions and under a lot of pressure so she decides to take a bathroom break and escape the house.

2. She can't handle living in Seattle with the gnats
Bernadette has always hated Seattle ever since she moved there because all the mother's, whom she calls gnats, in Galer Street School are obnoxious and she just doesn't fit in. Bernadette moved from LA to Seattle because she could not longer handle the shame of her Architect failure with the Twenty Mile House. After almost running Audrey Griffin over in the school parking lot and Audrey making a big scene over it, removing blackberries from her yard and creating a mudslide destroying the Kindergarten breakfast at Audrey's home and being made fun of by the other Galer Street mom's because she doesn't volunteer at the school often. Bernadette can no longer handle these pressures either and blows up in front of Soo-Lin during the intervention, "Oh, shut up. What the hell are you doing here anyway? Will someone open a window and let the gnat out?" (221 Semple). She could not longer handle Seattle and wanted to leave.

3. All the pressure from the Twenty Mile House
Bernadette was an architect before having Bee and moving Seattle. She was one of the only women in architecture so there was pressure just in her job. After the Twenty Mile House in LA was destroyed, Bernadette could not longer handle the pressures of being an architect so she decided to move out of LA with Elgin to Seattle and start a new life. She no longer was an architect instead she took care of Bee and the home.  "Bernadette Fox never built another house. She moved to Seattle with her husband, who got a job at Microsoft. When AIA made Fox a fellow, she didn't attend the ceremony" (130).

4. She was afraid of getting sick on the way to Antarctica
At the very beginning of the story we learn that Bee wanted to go to Antarctica with her parents if she got good grades. Bernadette started putting the trip together through her assistant in India. she checked everything off her list until she learned about the Drake Passage and that many get seasick when crossing this so Bernadette decided to look for medicine that would help her on the trip "I'm really getting scared about the trip to Antarctica . And not just because I hate people, which, for the record, I still do. I just don't think I can make it across the Drake Passage" (38). She no longer feels like going on the trip and decides to let Elgin and Bee go instead.

5. She was afraid of sending Bee off to boarding school
Most parents are sad to see their children to get on the bus for their first day of Kindergarten or see their kids leave for college. Bernadette was in a similar situation but she was sending Bee to boarding School for high school. Bernadette went to a boarding school and wanted her child to try something new. like all parents though they have this feeling that they don't want their children to leave home. Bernadette expresses her feelings in an email to her assistant, Manjula, in India, "do you hear the weeping all the way in India? Bee was accepted to Choate! Truly, I blame Elgie and myself, for regaling Bee with  our boarding school adventures" (40).

I'm not going to spoil the ending but I would read and find out if they find Bernadette. She goes on crazy adventures that are hard to follow but make you laugh out loud.

Blog #5:Memoirs and non-fiction

I believe that a book must be about 95% true in order for it to be considered non-fiction because if most of the book is lies then people will misinterpret the story line and always believe what’s in the book. There are certain details that can be changed such as a character’s name, maybe where they lived or just little facts like that. When an author is changing the whole storyline in which the ending of the story is different than the real thing, there is a big issue here of whether the book is non-fiction or fiction. I know people tweak their stories to make them more interesting to their audience but drastically changing the plot doesn’t make the story non-fiction.

There should be a new genre in which authors have a creative story that they experienced in their lifetime and if they want to write about it and make a few changes, sure, they can do that but it’s not considered fiction or non-fiction anymore. A new Genre will change the perspective of readers. I, as a reader, would want to know whether the whole book was true or not because I hate being led on. When I found out A Million Little Pieces wasn’t 100% true, my heart broke. I hated the thought that someone lied to me. Now if I was told before that half the book was true I would be fine with that because I would think about “How did this actually happen to this man?” and worry about how he dealt with this situation. I would be able to set the book down and say it was a great book but I know some of the things written were made up. With a new genre created for these half-truths, I believe readers will be more understanding to these books and critics won’t be fighting over “when something is considered non-fiction?” they’re just wasting energy on the subject.

I do agree with David Shields that you don’t have to make everything true within your story. People freak out about this too much. They can’t just label a book fiction or non-fiction because people are going to change things. There are 300 pages full of mostly fiction and there may be a fact in there but why can’t the book be non-fiction, it has facts right? I think putting books into genres is only complicating the whole book world. There are so many books between two or three genre that it’s unfair to the book to place it in one. I know it’s easier to categorize a book so they can be put on certain shelves in a book store or library but not every book is just fiction or just non-fiction. It would be better to classify them by author or maybe specifics things happening with in the story.