Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple

Description

A brilliant novel from the author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, about a day in the life of Eleanor Flood, forced to abandon her small ambitions and awake to a strange, new future.

Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today, she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action-life happens. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day Joe has chosen to tell his office-but not Eleanor-that he's on vacation. Just when it seems like things can't go more awry, an encounter with a former colleague produces a graphic memoir whose dramatic tale threatens to reveal a buried family secret.

TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT is a hilarious, heart-filled story about reinvention, sisterhood, and how sometimes it takes facing up to our former selves to truly begin living.

Editoral Review

An Amazon Best Book of October 2016: Maria Semple returns to the Seattle of her previous novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, this time with the protagonist Eleanor Flood, a status-conscious transplant who vows on page one that Today will be different. Spoiler alert: not really… at least not in the way that she thinks. Semple’s greatest asset as a writer is her charm, and her many fans—myself included—would gladly follow her wherever she will lead us. Semple’s spot-on eye for the telling, quirky detail and her sense of humor are enough to carry a novel, but in Today Will Be Different she introduces a few weightier strands to the story that could signal more depth to come in future novels. It’s fun to read Maria Semple’s books, and it’s fun to imagine where she’ll take us next. –Chris Schluep, The Amazon Book Review