Allison Pearson’s brilliant debut novel, I Don’t Know How She Does It, was a New York Times bestseller with four million copies sold around the world. Called “the definitive social comedy of working motherhood” (The Washington Post) and “a hysterical look–in both the laughing and crying senses of the world–at the life of Supermom” (The New York Times), I Don’t Know How She Does It introduced Kate Reddy, a woman as sharp as she was funny. As Oprah Winfrey put it, Kate’s story became “the national anthem for working mothers.”
Seven years later, Kate Reddy is facing her 50th birthday. Her children have turned into impossible teenagers; her mother and in-laws are in precarious health; and her husband is having a midlife crisis that leaves her desperate to restart her career after years away from the workplace. Once again, Kate is scrambling to keep all the balls in the air in a juggling act that an early review from the U.K. Express hailed as “sparkling, funny, and poignant…a triumphant return for Pearson.”
Will Kate reclaim her rightful place at the very hedge fund she founded, or will she strangle in her new “shaping” underwear? Will she rekindle an old flame, or will her house burn to the ground when a rowdy mob shows up for her daughter’s surprise (to her parents) Christmas party? Surely it will all work out in the end. After all, how hard can it be?
My Review
I have just had the pleasure of finishing this book, it came highly recommended and I can see why. This book was a strike of comedy genius, it tackles the lovely Kate and her trials and tribulations of being a premenopausal working mum, it made me laugh throughout and it will strike a chord with any working mum as we have all been her at some point. Praise for Allison Pearson on being able to capture all of this so well and create a book full of pure comedy moments but also touching on the trials and tribulations of being both a working mum and a teenager girl in todays society.
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