Comment

brianreynolds
Mar 28, 2017
Semple’s frenetic Today will be Different perhaps suffered in that it was digested immediately after Foer’s seven course Here I am. There were similarities in style: both left me in awe of the author’s imaginative word play and timing. But Semple’s book was a one day dash to a finish-line ending that was discomfiting both in terms of the action that had preceded it and behaviour that seemed only remotely plausible in the real world. Foer, in my mental race, took his time, stopped to smell the flowers, and let the reader fall in love with his characters. Finished well back in pack of course. But somehow won the race. Maybe if I’d read Semple first I would have felt more generous toward her characters and plot.