301. Today Will Be Different
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by: Beth Roach
Author: Maria Semple
Genre: Fiction, Humor
259 pages, published October 4, 2016
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
Today Will Be Different is a day in the life of Eleanor Flood, an accomplished graphic novelist, mother of preschooler Timby (who has faked an illness to spend the day with his mother), wife of acclaimed hand surgeon Joe (who may be leading a double life), and sister to Ivy who has married into a Southern Gothic family . As Eleanor navigates her topsy-turvy life, she learns about what is important in life.
Quotes
“Today will be different. Today I will be present. Today, anyone I speak to, I will look them in the eye and listen deeply. Today I’ll play a board game with Timby. I’ll initiate sex with Joe. Today I will take pride in my appearance. I’ll shower, get dressed in proper clothes, and change into yoga clothes only for yoga, which today I will actually attend. Today I won’t swear. I won’t talk about money. Today there will be an ease about me. My face will be relaxed, its resting place a smile. Today I will radiate calm. Kindness and self-control will abound. Today I will buy local. Today I will be my best self, the person I’m capable of being. Today will be different.”
“I don’t mean to ruin the ending for you, sweet child, but life is one long headwind. To make any kind of impact requires self-will bordering on madness. The world will be hostile, it will be suspicious of your intent, it will misinterpret you, it will inject you with doubt, it will flatter you into self-sabotage. My God, I’m making it sound so glamorous and personal! What the world is, more than anything? It’s indifferent.” “Say amen to that,” Spencer said.
“But you have a vision. You put a frame around it. You sign your name anyway. That’s the risk. That’s the leap. That’s the madness: thinking anyone’s going to care.”
“That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments in between. At the time, I hadn’t pegged them as being particularly happy. But now, looking back at those phantom snapshots, I’m struck by my calm, my ease, the evident comfort with my life. I’m happy in retrospect.”
“There’s a phenomenon I call the Helpless Traveler. If you’re traveling with someone who’s confident, organized, and decisive you become the Helpless Traveler: “Are we there yet?” “My bags are too heavy.” “My feet are getting blisters.” “This isn’t what I ordered.” We’ve all been that person. But if the person you’re traveling with is helpless, then you become the one able to decipher train schedules, spend five hours walking on marble museum floors without complaint, order fearlessly from foreign menus, and haggle with crooked cabdrivers. Every person has it in him to be either the Competent Traveler or the Helpless Traveler. Because Joe is so clearheaded and sharp, I’ve been able to go through life as the Helpless Traveler. Which, now that I think about it, might not be such a good thing.”
“You try your best, or you don’t try your best. The mountains don’t care.”
“You know how your brain turns to mush? How it starts when you’re pregnant? You laugh, full of wonder and conspiracy, and you chide yourself, Me and my pregnancy brain! Then you give birth and your brain doesn’t return? But you’re breast-feeding, so you laugh, as if you’re a member of an exclusive club? Me and my nursing brain! But then you stop nursing and the terrible truth descends: Your good brain is never coming back. You’ve traded vocabulary, lucidity, and memory for motherhood. You know how you’re in the middle of a sentence and you realize at the end you’re going to need to call up a certain word and you’re worried you won’t be able to, but you’re already committed so you hurtle along and then pause because you’ve arrived at the end but the word hasn’t? And it’s not even a ten-dollar word you’re after, like polemic or shibboleth, but a two-dollar word, like distinctive, so you just end up saying amazing? Which is how you join the gang of nitwits who describe everything as amazing.”
“There was no relief deeper than being loved by the person who’d known you the longest.”
“In the middle of one of her self-help phases, Ivy had once proclaimed that underneath all anger was fear. I’d long since wondered what, if anything, was underneath all fear.
I knew then: If underneath anger was fear, then underneath fear was love. Everything came down to the terror of losing what you love.”
“How’s your day so far?”
“Oh, can’t complain,” he said. “You?”
“Can complain, but won’t.”
“A live concert needs to be listened to live. Otherwise, it’s like eating day-old salad.”
“Because the other way wasn’t working. The waking up just to get the day over with until it was time for bed. The grinding it out was a disgrace, an affront to the honor and long shot of being alive at all.”
“One thing that happens when you have an alcoholic for a parent is you grow up the child of an alcoholic. … For a quick trip around the bases, it means you blame yourself for everything, you avoid reality, you can’t trust people, you’re hungry to please. Which isn’t all bad: perfectionism makes the straight-A student; lack of trust begets self-sufficiency; low self-esteem can be a terrific motivator; if everyone were so gung-ho on reality, there’d be no art.”
“Pain I’m good with. It’s discomfort I can’t handle.”
“Smell the soup, cool the soup,” Timby said. “Huh?” “It’s what they teach us in school when we’re upset. Smell the soup.” He took a deep breath in. “Cool the soup.” He blew out.”
My Take
Having enjoyed Semple’s previous book Where’d You Go, Bernadette, I had high hopes for Today Will Be Different. I was not disappointed. The plot isn’t important. Which is a good thing because there isn’t much of one. Instead, the reason to read this book is the richly drawn characters and the very clever and enlightening insights about life that Semple regularly delivers.
