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Published Oct 2016
272 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
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.
BookBrowse Review
"Semple's prose is light and engaging, with a generous sprinkling of humor mixed into the self-effacement surrounding the protagonist Eleanor, who is pretty much a mess. Her son, who is a budding cross-dresser, fakes being sick to get out of school, so her plans for the day are now going badly awry, and her husband seems to have gone missing. Furthermore, she's nowhere near getting the manuscript for her graphic novel memoir together, and taking her son with her to her (forgotten) lunch meeting, is only going to complicate things.
And things do get very complicated. The problem is, this book seems to be everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. All of the back-story parts float in and out around the present action, with only small handfuls of the information relevant to Eleanor today, and hardly any of it helps us understand why Eleanor is so unfocused. Whatever Semple was trying to portray, I'm afraid it didn't come through here, despite the clever language and funny vignettes included along the way." - Davida Chazan
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. This author is on her way to becoming a national treasure." - Kirkus
"A sharp, funny read...Consistently entertaining." - Publishers Weekly
"An introspective look, both comedic and tragic, at attempting to be the best one can be: wife, mother, or sibling. While not as laugh-out-loud funny as Where'd You Go, this book will satisfy fans of Semple and satire." - Library Journal
"Hilarious and touching, this will satisfy Semple's numerous fans and gain her new ones. Give this to readers of women's fiction, Seattle denizens and aspiring residents, and people reviewing their lives and choices." - Booklist
"Hilarious [and] heartwarming." - Entertainment Weekly
"Can an existential crisis make us laugh? Such is Semple's talent that this one does, without losing any of the punch or gravity of the hardest kinds of lived experience." - Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
"Today Will Be Different is a sublimely funny and inventive novel driven by Maria Semple's razor-sharp observations and a voice that leaps from the page." - Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins
"Whipsmart, dazzling, darkly comic and deeply touching. I loved it! - Marian Keyes, author of The Brightest Star in the Sky and This Charming Man
This information about Today Will Be Different was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Maria Semple's first novel, This One is Mine, was set in Los Angeles, where she also wrote for television shows including Arrested Development, Mad About You, and Ellen. She escaped from Los Angeles and lives with her family in Seattle, where her second novel Where'd You Go, Bernadette take place. It was published by Little, Brown & Co. in August, 2012.
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