Maria Semple · 2012 · global

Maria Semple's 2012 comic novel, told in emails, letters and documents, about a brilliant, misanthropic Seattle mother who disappears on the eve of a family cruise to Antarctica. Her fifteen-year-old daughter Bee assembles the paper trail and follows it to the ends of the earth, from Seattle to Tierra del Fuego and across the Drake Passage to the white continent. Sharp, warm and very funny about genius, motherhood and modern Seattle.

1. 1
   Seattle

   Bernadette Fox, a reclusive, agoraphobic former architect in Seattle, melts down and vanishes just before a family trip, leaving her teenage daughter Bee to work out where she went.

2. 2
   Ushuaia

   The trail leads to the very bottom of South America and Ushuaia, the jumping-off port for Antarctica.

3. 3
   Antarctica

   Across the wild Drake Passage to the white continent itself, where Bee finds her mother among the research stations, alive and herself again.