Where'd You Go, Bernadette

The main characters in Where’d You Go, Bernadette all have their own ways of evading unpleasant realities. Bernadette has become socially withdrawn, relying on her internet assistant, Manjula, to carry out even the simple tasks. Bernadette is so afraid of traveling that she is willing to undergo the “emergency” removal of her wisdom teeth to avoid the trip to Antarctica. She also uses prescription drugs to manage her anxiety and depression. Bernadette’s husband, Elgin, sees all these things as symptoms of mental illness, but he is guilty of his own form of escapism—immersing himself in his work at Microsoft and losing touch with his family. Bee romanticizes her family life, comparing the blackberry vines growing up through their floors to the rose briars that protected Sleeping Beauty. Dr. Kurtz, observing the same thing, sees it as indicating “poor reality testing” on the part of the Branch family.

Elgin Branch’s pet project, Samantha 2, offers something not unlike what Manjula offers Bernadette. Samantha 2 consists of a wearable computer chip controlled by the users’ thoughts, allowing the users to operate every other device in their house simply by thinking about it. Dr. Janelle Kurtz describes Samantha 2 as “an extreme version of what [she] find[s] an alarming trend towards reality avoidance” (205).