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

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."

About the Author :
Allison Pearson, named Critic of the Year and Interviewer of the Year in the British Press Awards, is a weekly columnist in the London Evening Standard and a member of the BBC's Newsnight Review panel. She lives in London with her husband, the "New Yorker" writer Anthony Lane, and their two children. "From the Hardcover edition."

Review :
"If you could buy stock in a book, I would stake all my savings on the success of Allison Pearson's new novel, "I Don't Know How She Does It." Here, at last, is the definitive social comedy of working motherhood." -Marjorie Williams, "Washinton Post " "A sparkling novel about juggling marriage, kids, and job (and getting some sleep) . . . Nearly every female lucky enough to have both a child and a byline . . . has strip-mined Pearson's theme: how to squeeze babies, marriage and a high-powered job into a day that cannot be stretched beyond 24 hours. But Pearson's Kate, a brisk, sardonic, loving world beater, has made it all fresh again." -Margaret Carlson, "Time" ." . . Heartbreaking . . . Anyone who has pumped breast milk in the back of a taxi, or wept quietly into the laundry hamper after arriving home too late for a good-night kiss, will recognize herself in this sharply observed, sometimes painfully sad story about the sordid disparity between the ideal and the reality of 'having it all.'" -Kate Betts, "New York Times Book Review" "What makes [Kate's] tale such a hoot are the spot-on details that crowd her life and her brain-and will be familiar to any woman who's ever tried to dress a squirming toddler while calling the office to explain why she's late . . . Pearson has an effortlessly smart style . . . I don't know a man on the planet who would get this book-or a woman who wouldn't." -Cathleen McGuigan, "Newsweek" "The fraught lives of modern women, especially those with children, is a classic theme of the age...But Pearson's book is refreshingly engaging because of the high quality of the prose and her uncanny ability to move from farce to pathos in the course of a single paragraph." -Sarah Lyall, "Vogue" "From the Hardcover edition."