Maria Semple seems to specialize in women who are "a mess," and her main character, Eleanor Flood, certainly falls into this category. I was surprised reading reviews on Amazon, which averaged just 3 stars. I think I may have given it 4 on Goodreads!
Eleanor is forty-something, disorganized, disheveled, inattentive, and generally ineffective at life. Formerly a successful animator, she is now years behind in publishing her graphic memoir. She is the wife of Joe, hand surgeon to the stars, and the mother of Timby, a precocious elementary school student. The story covers one improbable day in the life of Eleanor and involved Timby claiming to be sick at school, a meeting with an old colleague, and the discovery that her husband is supposedly "on vacation" from her job without her knowledge. Semple somehow manages to combine, stress, humor, slapstick, sadness, discord, and mystery into one reasonably entertaining novel.
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