by Maria Semple
First published 2016
Eleanor Flood wakes up determined to fix her messy life through small victories. She will shower, dress properly, drop her son Timby at school, attend poetry and yoga classes, stop swearing, and seduce her husband Joe. Simple goals for a woman who knows she's falling apart. But Timby fakes illness to stay home with her. Joe secretly takes vacation time without telling Eleanor, lying to both his wife and his workplace. Then Eleanor runs into a former colleague who possesses a graphic memoir containing secrets that could destroy her family. As her carefully planned day crumbles, Eleanor must confront the gap between who she wants to be and who she actually is. Maria Semple crafts a story about the collision between modest aspirations and chaotic reality, exploring how we reinvent ourselves and face uncomfortable truths about our past.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
259 pages · Hardcover · Little, Brown and Company