Where'd you go, Bernadette?

This book surprised me. It started off really slow, I put it down two times or more. (Or maybe I am just THAT impatient.) This, I would say, was the negative part for me. The structure the book is in form of correspondence between the characters (mails, notes, blog, etc. ), at first a I found it weird but it was original and engaging.

(SPOILER) One thing that seemed pretty weird to me was the way that Bee took the news that her father had a one night stand with his admin and got her pregnant. Her only comment was: “So basically”, I said, “your life is ruined.” I’m sorry, but something in me made me smile. “ I expected something more, not this totally grown-up reaction from a 15 year old girl.
Also, I don’t think Bernadette even knew about Soo-Lin’s pregnancy. It was like the author dropped this huge bomb with the news of the pregnancy but I never got to see the consequences of it, how it affected the main characters. 
The story ended too abruptly for me and I was left wanting to know more about Bernadette’s new architecture project, what would happen when she come back from Antarctica, what would Elgin do now that he was out of Microsoft, will Bernadette get back on track, and so on. It’s just that the end for me felt like incomplete, like there was a missing chapter or something.

Now the good part.  Personally, I can relate to what Bernadette is going through. There was a time when I too used to blame everybody or everything else for my mood. I used to complain a lot of the city I lived in, how there were very few job opportunities, small chances to change your life, bad working conditions, how I hated the weather and laziness of the people. Later on (as happened with Bernadette) I was able to see that it was not the city, it was not the people, it was me all along, my behaviour, my way of seeing things. Somewhere along the way I chose to blame my frustration on everybody and everything. 
I still do it, sometimes. It’s like a bad habit. It’s automatic. I have to really stop for a moment and reason with myself. 
In this book, Bernadette is feeling frustrated as well, because she stopped creating but she didn’t know the reason behind her frustration. The whole book is about her journey of realisation of what caused this frustration on the first place. (SPOILER) As her friend Paul Jellinek put it very correctly, after a very long email in which Bernadette is complaining about almost everything, he responded: “Bernadette, are you done? You can’t honestly believe any of this nonsense. People like you must create. If you don’t create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society. “

To sum up, this book is, at its core, a story about a woman who disappears, both literally and figuratively. It’s about losing yourself and finding yourself. I am pretty sure that we all experience something similar, at certain stage of our lives. That is why it is easy to relate to. Personally I enjoyed reading it even though at the beginning it was a bit slow and looked kind of boring. I had to put it down a few times but when I finally started reading it seriously, I finished it in two days.