This book was a really fun narrative, with extraordinary characters and a hilarious plot. But most enjoyable of all is the quirky, chaotic structure. It’s loosely epistolary - letters and emails form the bulk of the text. Like all epistolary works, the majority of the action happens between the lines, and there are unreliable narrators in every direction. Early on we get some idea that Bee - Bernadette’s daughter - has somehow brought all these narrators into some kind of cohesion. She acts as a kind of chorus, occasionally giving us a reality check or two - but it’s really quite occasional, and her role in the story is rather understated until very late in the book. Bee’s house and her school are the two major elements in the story, and it’s quite interesting - the one is rather intricately described as a building while the other is defined almost exclusively through its community members and apparent norms. They are like two poles of her personality, perhaps, her fragility and her intelligence, made real in the physical world. The color blue is also something of a fascinating motif, though I must admit I paid rather less attention to it.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and would certainly recommend it.