Today Will Be Different

A novel by Maria Semple. I didn't like this one at all. The protagonist is completely selfish, arrogant. Perhaps I see too much of myself in her. Eleanor Flood is an animator living in Seattle. She can't remember names, dates; she's erratic, drifting through life. So she wakes one morning vowing that "today will be different". She'll take care with her appearance, have lunch with a boring friend, play a game with her son, initiate sex with her husband. Be her best self. Then Life happens. Her son fakes illness to spend time with her. Her lunch date is not with the boring friend but an old work colleague, who opens a family secret that Eleanor thought she had put to rest. Her husband has been going to work all week, yet has told his receptionist he's been on vacation and has not been in. Where's he been? All gets resolved, sort of. And, to redeem the book, and Eleanor, she wakes the next morning saying, "today will be different".
This book is virulently anti-Catholic. It's anti-faith, period, until the end. And if you're feeling blue at all, don't read the first page. The self-deprecation is easy to identify with.