The one thing that sticks out in Maria Semple's bioblurb is that she was a writer for Arrested Development. It's know surprise then, that the title character of Where'd You Go, Bernadette is an eccentric, semi-anti-social mother (unlike Lucille 1, she's not an alcoholic, or an emotionally brutal mother). Her intelligent, well-meaning daughter, Bee, has been trying to put together the pieces after her mother's disappearance (okay, so maybe Bernadette is more like George Bluth, absentee parent and cause of all this commotion, but Bee is definitely a Michael Bluth-type).

But enough with the Arrested Development comparisons, this is a book after all. And it is narrated by its fifteen-year-old heroine, not Ron Howard. There are parts where this book is charming, scenes between Bee and Bernadette which ring true as to the relationship between a loving mother and her daughter. There are parts where the complications appear as unnecessary, but they don't really hurt the narrative. Some of my favorite notes come from Audrey Griffin, the parent of one of Bee's classmates, whose complete denial of her son's delinquent conduct is also sweet--in a deranged kind of way. Don't get me wrong, a like my characters a little bit off.

Bernadette is a fast-paced novel, filled with quirks and references to Microsoft and TED lectures, and a number of other tech-culture references of now. It is this technology that allows Bee to investigate her mother's disappearance from thousands of miles away. My only real criticism is that I wouldn't know where to shelve this one. With the young narrator, it feels like it would appeal to a YA audience, but it's a hell of a lot better than most of the YA that is being produced today.