Where'd You Go, Bernadette

My happy summer holiday book was the funny, quirky and surprisingly moving Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. It's the kind of book you read and want to buy for friends -- Alison Starling * THE GUARDIAN * A dazzling comic novel about a misunderstood architect. It's an eccentric and brilliantly accomplished story with a real screenplay quality to it -- Viv Groskop * THE OBSERVER * An extremely funny and ultimately moving farce about a quirky American family falling apart over a holiday to Antarctica -- Alex von Tunzelmann * EVENING STANDARD * This novel, written in the form of emails, notes and phone calls, is original and funny and you'll learn a lot about Antarctica. -- Joanna Czechowska * WOMAN * This is an extraordinary novel - a fresh, funny, perceptive voice, and an exhilarating read. * GOOD BOOK GUIDE * ...wonderfully eccentric * MUMSNET * ...this book is highly enjoyable. -- David Hebblethwaite * FOLLOW THE THREAD * Where'd You Go, Bernadette is my favorite novel so far this year. It's funnier than a season's worth of Modern Family, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Justified episodes; it's also the most original and imaginative fiction I've read since The Invention of Hugo Cabret -- James Patterson * NEW YORK TIMES * I've been devouring the savagely funny Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. A TV comedy writer, Semple's wide array of targets include parenting, over-achievement, schoolgates rivalry, creativity, Seattle, Canadians, Microsoft, Antarctica and marital love... Semple is funny, smart and deeply touching -- Rowan Pelling * THE DAILY TELEGRAPH * This light relief on the Women's prize shortlist has warmth and bite in equal measure. Brilliant, troubled Bernadette - a visionary architect who's started a family but lost the plot - is a fantastic creation, and Semple's picaresque comedy, told through letters, emails and even a live blog, skewers the absurdities of American privilege while drawing a heartfelt portrait of mother-daughter love * THE GUARDIAN * Semple's exuberant tale is buoyed up by deft plotting and pitch-perfect characters, whose idiosyncrasies and wrong-headed interactions are by turns comic, tender and craven. Excellent stuff. -- James Urquhart * FT * Delivered from multiple perspectives through letters, telephone calls, magazine articles and emails, it is cleverly plotted and compulsively readable. -- Ian Wall * PROPERTY WEEK * Refreshing, honest and witty, this novel about motherhood zips and fizzes along, from start to end -- Janine Cook * THE INDEPENDENT '50 Best Beach Reads' * compulsively readable comedy... packed with wit, honesty and charm * MUMSNET * Semple is a TV comedy writer, and the pleasures here are the pleasures of the best American TV: plot, wit and heart. It's refreshing to find a female misunderstood genius at the heart of the book, and a mother-daughter relationship characterised by unadulterated mutual affection. -- Justine Jordan * THE GUARDIAN * it's refreshing in its honesty and complexity -- Natasha Tripney * THE OBSERVER * This is an extraordinary novel - a fresh, funny, perceptive voice, and an exhilarating read. * GOOD BOOK GUIDE * It is extremely funny, and Semple has a way of combining a technologically savvy, ice-cool wit with a stealthy ability to show gradually a character's warmer side. -- Tom Cox * THE SUNDAY TIMES * When eccentric ex-architect Bernadette goes AWOL, her 15-year-old daughter, Bee, goes all Sherlock and reads her mum's emails for some answers - and a secret past. Surprisingly, I found myself seriously LOLing too. No wonder it's being turned into a movie! * COMPANY * This novel, shortlisted for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction, uses email correspondence to hilarious and heartbreaking effect. The disappearance of Bernadette Fox drives the engaging plot, with the mother/daughter relationship across geographical divides at its core * METRO * full of quirky charm about the mother/daughter bond * GOOD HOUSEKEEPING * This fiercely sophisticat

Maria Semple spent fifteen years in Los Angeles as a television writer, working on hit shows including ELLEN, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, MAD ABOUT YOU and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. Her second novel, WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE, was an international bestseller and was shortlisted for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2013 Melissa Nathan Award. Maria lives in Seattle. www.mariasemple.com