Bernadette Fox is an architect, MacArthur “Genius” award winner, a locally-sourced, green architect long before anyone else was, and creative force of nature. Unfortunately, due to a combination of her inability to suffer fools, and just bad luck, everything she remarkably achieves is ruined, and she leaves L.A. with her husband, a genius in his own right, when he is scooped up by Microsoft, to start again in Seattle. She proves the point that being intellectually gifted does not presume emotional intelligence, especially with respect to oneself; the setbacks suffered in L.A., coupled with miscarriages, her newborn daughter’s near tragic heart surgeries, and lack of emotional support from equally inept husband and local moms, leads Bernadette to a crisis of heart and life. While this sounds like a Lifetime melodrama, it is instead a wildly funny send-up of Portlandia culture, with tolerably insightful, non-preachy themes of the value and need for community, emotional sharing and sincere communication with loved ones, and the importance of pursuing creative goals balanced with familial obligations.

Elgin, Bernadette’s husband, is equally deficient in emotional intelligence, attempting to support Bernadette, but when himself overwhelmed, disappears into the demands of his MS workload, and the satisfactions of being a TED superstar speaker, and VIP adored by his work team. Semple effectively tells this tale by knitting together emails, letters, court documents, an FBI dossier, as well as scenes re-told from various viewpoints (an epistolary novel) to convey each character’s opinions motivations, and deceptions, self and other. She masterfully handles the jumping around required of this story format, without losing the reader (Who is speaking now? When is this taking place?). While the sidebar stories of daughter Bee’s adjustment to her parents’ marital and life crises, Audrey Griffin’s crazy denial of her son’s drug addiction, and subsequent key role in saving her nemesis, Bernadette, and Elgin’s lapse with admin Soo-Lin, add to the hilarity and carry the story forward, the very best bits are when Bernadette shares her views on life and the people around her. Both when she is out of kilter, and finally regains her balance and purpose, she is both hysterically funny and affecting. Her observations are wickedly humorous, satirical, and spot-on. The reader will patiently wait for our heroine to re-take center stage after her absence (hence the title) and bring us home to a satisfying conclusion.