Today Will Be Different

Critics Review

• The joy, as before, is in the narrative voice… Brilliant set-pieces include a scene of existential despair in CostCo, a flashback to a hideous society wedding in the deep south, and Dr Joe’s epiphany during a Seattle Seahawks game.. Semple reaffirms her gift for creating memorable, monstrous characters

  THE GUARDIAN

• This whip-smart, bleakly humorous study of how we live now is full of finely drawn characters and deserves to widen her fanbase.

  SUNDAY TIMES

• It’s funny and silly but also poignant and more than a little reminiscent of Semple’s bestselling Where’d You Go, Bernadette

  MAIL ON SUNDAY

• There are some good lines and more than a few laughs, plus occasional pungent observations on life

  DAILY MAIL

• With its sparky gags and quirky cast of characters, never has a meltdown been so entertaining

  GLAMOUR

• One to Watch: Where’d You Go, Bernadette established Maria Semple as a brilliant comic writer. Today Will Be Different, about a middle-aged mum who is desperately trying to keep control of her life despite having one of those days, is just as smart, funny and original.

  GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

• sees Semple once again writing about a difficult woman with gleeful empathy and humour that can turn on a knife edge to heartbreak

  RED

• Whipsmart, dazzling, darkly comic and deeply touching. I loved it!

  Marian Keyes

• I adore it. Every bit as smart – and smart-arsed – as BERNADETTE . . . this is wonderful

  Sam Baker, author of THE WOMAN WHO RAN and co-founder of THE POOL

• So unique, so smart, so funny, so beautifully humane, so utterly of our times, it’s astonishing

  Gillian Flynn, author of GONE GIRL

• I love Maria Semple! TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT is just as funny, poignant, and life-affirming as BERNADETTE

  Nina Stibbe, author of LOVE, NINA and MAN AT THE HELM

• I had the uncanny feeling, while reading TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT, that Maria Semple had somehow snuck into my house when I was asleep, took an x-ray image of my heart, then painted it by hand in neon colors. This book is searingly honest and hilarious and dark and neurotic. It is dizzying. Best of all, it is delicious

  Lauren Groff, author of FATES AND FURIES

• Today will be different, Eleanor Flood tells herself, and oh baby hang on for a wild ride that’s like nothing Eleanor sees coming. In this brilliant depiction of a woman hanging on by her fingernails, Maria Semple delivers a perfect panic of a day on which the barely tolerable, muddle-through-it desperation that so many of us have known at one time or another suddenly erupts with life-shattering force. 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 BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH CHE GUEVARA

• Clever, funny and silly

  PSYCHOLOGIES

• This waspishness selfishness is a clever mask, but Semple has a knack of teasing out the warmth behind it.

  FINANCIAL TIMES

• an entertaining book to while away a few hours.

  SUNDAY EXPRESS

• her narrative oozes stylistic originality

  i NEWSPAPER

• Captivating, right up to the final twist.

  GRAZIA

• this witty novel is a life-affirming read.

  CLOSER

• Semple has mastered the intersection of sad and nuts like no one else…. Like a cross between Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, the best episides of Bob’s Burgers, and the private journal of the smartest, most irritable woman you know, Today Will Be Different is a reckless and scattershot work of genius

  Bookforum

• Another tour de force… The success of this poetic, seriously funny and brainy dream of a novel – ‘Mrs. Dalloway Takes Laughing Gas’, perhaps – has to do with Maria Semple’s range of riffs and preoccupations. 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. If that’s considered a trick, readers of Semple’s novel will be overjoyed to fall for it

  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. Today Will Be Different is hilarious, moving and written perfectly, and it makes a good case for Semple as one of America’s best living comic novelists

  NPR.org

• Readers who devoured Where’d You Go, Bernadette will love Eleanor [Flood]’s wry voice and dark humor

  People

• Loopy, deeply and darkly funny, and brave… Semple is a master of the social skewer, boldly impolite and impolitic… Eleanor is as sharp and Semple-esque as they come, which is to say a delightful danger to herself and others, sympathetic, and so very smart

  Washington Post

• A little bit wacky and always wise, and we recognize people we know – including ourselves – on every page

  Glamour

• Outrageously funny. But [Today Will Be Different] cuts closer to the bone than Bernadette did, and its main character’s problems feel more real…. Ms. Semple is an immensely appealing writer, and there’s something universal in her heroine’s efforts to get a handle on a life spinning out of control. We may not all have long-lost sisters who live in the most crazily status-obsessed corners of the South, but we surely know what she means about waking up each dawn with new resolve that melts by midmorning

  New York Times

• Semple brilliantly conveys a whole array of angst – self-deprecation and existential dread and a panic attack of neuroses – while simultaneously packing in a liberal dose of levity… It’s a joy to watch Eleanor struggle to change for the better. That we get to laugh along with her is an added bonus

  Los Angeles Times

• Deliciously mucky mayhem

  San Francisco Chronicle

• A vivid, hilarious, remarkably compact book – 271 pages’ worth of crisp observations and occasionally too-close-to-home truths about modern relationships. And it’s anchored by a gorgeous scrapbook-slash-mini-graphic novel

  Wired

• Quirky and blade-sharp

  Entertainment Weekly

• Wickedly funny… Semple’s trademark dark humor and knack for creating a page-turning story out of socially awkward interactions will make this one you can’t put down – and won’t want to

  Town and Country

• A zesty, memorable novel

  Guardian

• Brisk, amusing and engaging, and Semple is a champion observer of the human condition

  Miami Herald

• Written with Semple’s hilarity-cum-sincerity, Eleanor grapples with the past to reconcile her future and makes readers smile

  Marie Claire

• Crackling with honesty and heart

  BuzzFeed

• Today Will Be Different starts off as a funny, rant-y novel and becomes, by its end, an unexpectedly heartfelt exploration of a woman’s inner life. (And yes, it’s still funny.)

  Seattle Times

• Fans of Bernadette will recognize Semple’s propulsive and satirical dialogue

  Chicago Tribune

• 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

• In her latest brainy, seriously funny novel, private school parents, a husband’s secret life and more confront a Seattle woman

  Editors' Choice, New York Times Book Review