Arrested Development writer Maria Semple released a trailer for her upcoming book, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, that features a cameo from actor Tom Skerritt and finds Semple unsuccessfully pitching the novel to booksellers.
In this — the first of three trailers — Semple learns the hard way that booksellers aren’t interested in misanthropic women, anything that can be described as “epistolary,” or novels with 14-year-old narrators.
Just how epistolary and misanthropic is the book? Title character Bernadette Fox is a Seattle housewife to a Microsoft-employed workaholic husband and a mother to teenaged daughter Bee. When Fox goes missing after becoming increasingly intolerant of her life in Seattle and the people around her, Bee tries to track her down through e-mails and documents.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette hits shelves Aug. 14. Semple’s first novel, This One Is Mine, was released in 2008.
