If that's considered a trick, readers of Semple's novel will be overjoyed to fall for it.'- Meg Wolitzer, New York Times Book Review 'Writing a comedy novel that manages to connect emotionally is no easy task, but Semple knocks it out of the park. All kinds of details, painful and perverse and deeply droll, cling to her heroine and are appraised and examined and skewered and simply wondered at. Dalloway Takes Laughing Gas,' perhaps - has to do with Maria Semple's range of riffs and preoccupations. The success of this poetic, seriously funny and brainy dream of a novel - 'Mrs. 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. 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.

It's also the day Joe has chosen to tell his office - but not Eleanor - that he's on vacation. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. But before she can put her modest plan into action, life happens. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. But today, she will tackle the little things. A brilliant novel and instant New York Times bestseller 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.

Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple