I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother [Kindle Edition]

Allison Pearson (Author)

Book Description

Delightfully smart and heartbreakingly poignant, Allison Pearson’s smash debut novel has exploded onto bestseller lists as “The national anthem for working mothers.” Hedge-fund manager, wife, and mother of two, Kate Reddy manages to juggle nine currencies in five time zones and keep in step with the Teletubbies. But when she finds herself awake at 1:37 a.m. in a panic over the need to produce a homemade pie for her daughter’s school, she has to admit her life has become unrecognizable. With panache, wisdom, and uproarious wit, I Don’t Know How She Does It brilliantly dramatizes the dilemma of every working mom.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Allison Pearson's debut novel, I Don't Know How She Does It, is a rare and beautiful hybrid: a devastatingly funny novel that's also a compelling fictional world. You want to climb inside this book and inhabit it. However, you might find it pretty messy once you're in there. Narrator Kate Reddy is the manager of a hedge fund and mother of two small children. The book opens with an emblematic scene as Kate "distresses" a store-bought mince pie to make it appear homemade. Her days are measured in increments of minutes and even seconds; her fund stays organized but her house and family are falling apart. The book is a pearly string of great lines. Here's Kate on lack of sleep: "They're right to call it a broken night.... You crawl back to bed and you lie there trying to do the jigsaw of sleep with half the pieces missing." On baby boys: "A mother of a one-year-old son is a movie star in a world without critics." On subtle office dynamics:

The women in the offices of EMF [Kate's firm] don't tend to display pictures of their kids. The higher they go up the ladder, the fewer the photographs. If a man has pictures of kids on his desk, it enhances his humanity; if a woman has them it decreases hers. Why? Because he's not supposed to be home with the children; she is.

There's inherent drama here: Kate is wildly appealing, and we want things to work out for her. In the end, the book isn't a just collection of clever lines on the theme of working motherhood; it's a real, rich novel about a character we come to cherish. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly

This scintillating first novel has already taken its author's native England by storm, and in the tradition of Bridget Jones, to which it is likely to be compared, will almost certainly do the same here. The Bridget comparison has only limited validity, however: both books have a winning female protagonist speaking in a diary-like first person, and both have quirkily formulaic chapter endings. But Kate is notably brighter, wittier and capable of infinitely deeper shadings of feeling than the flighty Bridget, and her book cuts deeper. She is the mother of a five-year-old girl and a year-old boy, living in a trendy North London house with her lower-earning architect husband, and is a star at her work in an aggressive City of London brokerage firm. She is intoxicated by her jet-setting, high-profile job, but also is desperately aware of what it takes out of her life as a mother and wife, and scrutinizes, with high intelligence and humor, just how far women have really come in the work world. If that makes the book sound polemical, it is anything but. It is delightfully fast moving and breathlessly readable, with dozens of laugh-aloud moments and many tenderly touching ones-and, for once in a book of this kind, there are some admirable men as well as plenty of bounders. Toward the end-to which a reader is reluctant to come-it becomes a little plot-bound, and everything is rounded off a shade too neatly. But as a hilarious and sometimes poignant update on contemporary women in the workplace, it's the book to beat.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• File Size: 591 KB
• Print Length: 352 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0375713751
• Publisher: Anchor; 1 edition (October 1, 2002)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000FC1IPO
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #84,186 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 73 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Guilty Pleasure December 18, 2002

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

As a working mom logging in over 2,000 billable hours a year outside the home -- I couldn't put the book down. Obviously this book "spoke" to me on a very personal level. It was such a guilty pleasure to read -- when, like Kate, I had Holdiay cards to send, cookies to bake for the school Christmas party and matters of the family to attend to all after coming home from work at 10 pm. But, I'm not sure I would "get" this book or enjoy it much if I hadn't already walked a mile in Kate Reddy's shoes.

Of course this book is over the top -- doesn't it have to be to be entertaining? Even I found myself saying "I don't know how she does it." But there are many thoughts in the book that are right-on and thought provoking. Take for example Kate Reddy's observation that fathers that leave work early or schedule business around their family commitments are lauded as "involved fathers" when mothers doing the same are suspected of not being committed to their work or are seen as unreliable or unaccessible. Whether you are a mom working full-time outside the home or not, this and many other insights in the book highlight interesting social issues.

I would be interested to know whether this book appeals to stay-at-home moms. I suspect not based on the fact that many of my own stay-at-home friends have little interest in what my life is like and often think that a mother who works full-time outside the home is akin to a mother who eats her young.

As for mothers working full-time outside the home, this book is sure to be a winner and a welcomed comic relief. As for myself, I plan to give this book to my mother for Christmas to help her understand the dilemmas of being a professional and a mother of young children and the difficulty of "having it all".

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Has Allison Pearson been spying on me?? October 7, 2002

By Nancy U. Jacobs

Format:Hardcover

I just devoured this book on a guilt-ridden business trip and identified so strongly with the character of Kate. It was the first time I have heard the working mom's voice articulated so clearly. I laughed out loud repeatedly on the plane and ultimately felt a little better about the decisions I have made in my life. A must-read.

87 of 101 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars mixed feelings ... November 30, 2002

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Although I was totally engrossed in this novel, and thought that Kate was a very real and often sympathetic character, I ended up with very mixed feelings about this book. I am a mother who has temporarily given up a career I loved to stay at home with my kids. This wasn't an easy decision for me, and I would never criticize those who made a different decision (or who have no choice in the matter). I was shocked at the venomous comments about stay-at-home mothers from Kate and from other reviewers of this book. While I am sure that there are some stay-at-home mothers who take pleasure in making working mothers feel bad (they are probably the ones who are at-home because they feel like they should be, rather than because they want to be, and are miserable themselves), I believe that most of us have alot of sympathy for the sacrifices and trade-offs that working mothers are forced to make. And, frankly, most of us are too busy getting through our own days to worry about what others are doing. The descriptions of stay-at-home moms as spending all of their time at the gym, having manicures, writing notes for playdates, was just ludicrous. I have two toddlers and I feel incredibly lucky when I have the time to shower in the morning or get out for an hour by myself to go shopping. Being a stay-at-home mother isn't easy, neither is being a working mom, and I find it incredibly sad when we have to insult each other in order to feel better about our own choices.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Kate Reddy is hilarious, tenderhearted, cynical, and TIRED! October 23, 2002

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

What a terrific book! I've shamelessly stolen time and left other "must do" tasks to fend for themselves while I devoured this very smart, very funny, and piercingly accurate book.

I've read chunks of this book to my husband, to friends, and e-mailed selected tidbits to my sister. It's that good. ...Kate Reddy doesn't whine; she articulates, with wit and perception, what's so unspeakably tough about the shoes she's walking in. Even if they're fudge-colored pencil heels worn with an Armani suit as corporate armor!

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars I know exactly how she does it January 2, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

She has a bazillion dollars, a wonderful understanding husband, great lingerie, a fantasy lover and more or less everything else she wants in the world.

Terrific. I know how she does it, now can someone tell me how I do it? I only have the kids in common.

As a struggling, overeducated, extremely underpaid, single mother, this book was a total disappointment. Even comedy must have some reality to it. There are cute bits - yes, mothers are competitive - but the treacly attitude does them in. And at the end? SHE can walk away and 99% of us cannot; it's a copout. I was very disappointed with this book.

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars disappointing February 23, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Was very disappointed with this book after reading such great reviews. Yes, it is well written- the Brits have a way with comedic writing- but my God. Throughout the book Kate Reddy struggles to balance a high powered job as a financial advisor with husband and 2 children, railing at the Sloaney stay-at-home full time mothers who deride her for her working mother status. This group is very well characterized and described- appalling types- and bright beautiful Kate suddenly at the end joins them. Quits her job, buys a home in the country with a paddock, and joins the PTA while her husband works on building a rock wall. Its as if Allison Pearson stopped writing this book several chapters from the end and it was completed by her alter ego, a stay at home wealthy mother. Extremely disappointing- and in fact, unrealistic. The majority of women in this country need to work- it is not a luxurious option to be tossed away when its time for a change. Ms. Pearson does a wonderful humorous job of describing the conflict this role provides- then provides a completely unrealistic sappy pat solution, one not available to those of us who do not have the luxury of having a husband who can provide. And why on God's earth did she become one of "them", the very group she so delightfully disparages, the minority of women who take pride in their cooking, their ability to get their children into tony prep schools, who spend all of their time arranging play dates and sending thank you notes? She leads the reader to believe this is the only solution to a happy life. Its appalling.

Save your money. This book will inevitably make you angry...

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