I Don't Know How She Does It

The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother

By: Allison Pearson

Narrated by: Emma Fielding

Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

For every woman trying to strike that impossible balance between work and home - and pretending that she has - and for every woman who has wanted to hurl the acquaintance who coos admiringly, "Honestly, I just don't know how you do it," out a window, here's a novel to make you cringe with recognition and laugh out loud. With fierce, unsentimental irony, Allison Pearson's novel brilliantly dramatizes the dilemma of working motherhood at the start of the 21st century.

Meet Kate Reddy, hedge-fund manager and mother of two. She can juggle nine different currencies in five different time zones and get herself and two children washed and dressed and out of the house in half an hour. In Kate's life, Everything Goes Perfectly as long as Everything Goes Perfectly. She lies to her own mother about how much time she spends with her kids; practices pelvic floor squeezes in the boardroom; applies tips from Toddler Taming to soothe her irascible boss; uses her cell phone in the office bathroom to procure a hamster for her daughter's birthday ("Any working mother who says she doesn't bribe her kids can add Liar to her résumé"); and cries into the laundry hamper when she misses her children's bedtime.

In a novel that is at once uproariously funny and achingly sad, Allison Pearson captures the guilty secret lives of working women - the self-recrimination, the comic deceptions, the giddy exhaustion, the despair - as no other writer has. Kate Reddy's conflict - How are we meant to pass our days? How are we to reconcile the two passions, work and motherhood, that divide our lives? - gets at the private absurdities of working motherhood as only a novel could: with humor, drama, and bracing wisdom.

©2002 Allison Pearson (P)2002 Random House Inc., Random House Audio, a Division of Random House Inc.

Critic reviews

"Delightfully fast moving and breathlessly readable, with dozens of laugh-aloud moments and many tenderly touching ones." (Publishers Weekly)
"A rare and beautiful hybrid: a devastatingly funny novel that's also a compelling fictional world." (Amazon.com)
"A compelling manifesto on the plight of working mothers that manages to be both angry and funny." (Booklist)

Lively, entertaining and very funny

I was in for a surprise hardly expecting it to be that pleasant. We haven't seen many female writers who can effortlessly blend a very nimble writing style with good story-telling.
The novel was funny and moving, except for the happy ending which seemed too contrived.

The epitome of the spoken-word experience

I give this title 5 stars out of 4. The book is superbly paced, and narrator Emma Fielding is nothing short of brilliant. Allison Pearson focuses on relationships and the difficulty in juggling career and personal issues, and her deft touch is perfect.

Hard To Listen

The accent of the narrator was so thick that I had to hang onto every word. The book may have been good but I don't want to have to struggle to enjoy a good book. Emily Gray would have been a better narrator.

Sad story too...

no right answers

I am sorry I used up my book credit on this book. I downloaded this book the day my son started to cry when he sees me leave for work. Don't call me naive but I thought I would settle the doubt/guilt I feel as a working mother by listening to this book. I guess there are no right answers. If you are a working mother, just live happy with the knowledge that you made the best possible decision for your situation -- & pick another book.

Fun and easy read.

This was enjoyable and funny.

Rambling-Nothing-Rambling

Having ADHD, I can speak as an expert when I say this book is all over the place and no where at the same time. I kept waiting for something to happen for which all the antics happened around...NOTHING. It's reads as a bunch of jotted notes. Though I enjoyed the narrators intonation and accent; the rest left me with you guessed it- NOTHING. Not at all what I hoped for the book, and I always start a book expecting very little as to be supremely pleased when it turns out to be a wonderful meeting of story and story telling. This is a great book if you are doing other things and need to ale to check out and check back in without rewinding. You miss nothing pertinent.

Painful; embarrassing for women

The main character is the worst of all martyrs.
Readers are expected to feel empathy for a character that cheats on her husband while badly juggling her kids and career. Perhaps I would have liked the main character better if she made at least one decision that made sense.

Superb, energizing, amusing, sympathic

Buy it.

Bland

I found myself distracted by the narrator and the lack of creativity in the book. I wonder if the audio version makes it more difficult to connect? Not sure. At any rate, I did not finish it since I felt I had heard this whining before and was bored. Spend your time with another book.

I want my book credit back.

I was so excited after reading the reviews that I bought this to take on a trip. After trying to listen for miles, and miles, I finally decided to drive in silence. It was tough to listen to and the story just saddened me.