Thursday, October 20, 2016

Today Will Be Different

Quoting the review I read in Goodreads with my own: TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT is a hilarious, (No, NOT hilarious) heart-filled story about reinvention, (NOT heartfilled, crazyfilled) sisterhood, (They hated and disappointed each other) and how sometimes it takes facing up to our former selves to truly begin living. (You call this living?)

I dreaded writing this review after loving Where’d You Go, Bernadette years ago. The narrator is middle aged, Eleanor Flood. She is an animator, mother (Timby, age 9) and wife of Joe. They live in Seattle. She is a miserable cynic who loves her family but can’t stand them at the same time. She had a rough but somewhat interesting childhood, and seems to have really lost her mind. She is not just a little quirky, her manic behavior is kind of scary. The story takes place in one endlessly long day. The ideas come and go, scenes left dangling with little or no meaning. The numerous characters are equally bizarre and their stories -even the meaningful ones, like the scenes with her sister -leave the reader bewildered. The one and only element I enjoyed was her drawings (animations) that depicted her childhood. Maybe it should have been a graphic novel as Eleanor was meant to be working on in the book. I am not a writer. I am a reader. As a reader, this was an unenjoyable experience. I still recommend Bernadette. And I look forward to more work from Maria Semple, with my fingers crossed.

1 comment:

  1. Haha! That Goodreads review is hilarious. I have this on hold at the library in case I decide to see for myself all the crazypants everyone is talking about.

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