I Don't Know How She Does it

by Allison Pearson (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.30

  Meet Kate Reddy, 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. A victim of time famine, Kate counts seconds like other women count calories. As she hurtles between appointments, through her head spools the crazy tape-loop of the working mother's life: must remember client reports, bouncy castles, transatlantic phone call, nativity play, check Dow Jones, cancel hygienist, squeeze sagging pelvic floor, make time for sex. Factor in a manipulative nanny, an Australian boss who looks at Kate's breasts as if they're on special offer, a long suffering husband, her quietly aghast in-laws, two needy children and an e-mail lover, and you have a woman juggling so many balls that some day soon something's going to hit the ground. In an uproariously funny and achingly sad novel, Allison Pearson captures the guilty secret lives of working mothers, the self-recriminations, comic deceptions, forgeries, giddy exhaustion and despair as no other writer has ever done. With fierce irony and a sparkling style, she brilliantly dramatises the dilemma of working motherhood at the start of the 21st century.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $3.30

  A victim of time famine, thirty-five-year-old Kate counts seconds like other women count calories. As she runs between appointments, through her head spools the crazy tape-loop of every high-flying mother's life: client reports, bouncy castles, Bob The Builder, transatlantic phone calls, dental appointments, pelvic floor exercises, flights to New York, sex (too knackered), and stress-busting massages she always has to cancel (too busy). Factor in a controlling nanny, a chauvinist Australian boss, a long-suffering husband, two demanding children and an e-mail lover, and you have a woman juggling so many balls that some day soon something's going to hit the ground. Pearson brings her sharp wit and compassionate intelligence to this hilarious and, at times, piercingly sad study of the human cost of trying to Have It All. Women everywhere are already talking about the Kate Reddy column which appears weekly in the Daily Telegraph, and recommending it to their sisters, mothers, friends and even their bewildered partners. This fictional debut by one of Britain's most gifted journalists is the subject of a movie deal with Miramax rumoured to be for almost $1million and has sold around the world, sparking bidding wars in Spain, Germany and Japan. Everyone is getting Reddy for Kate.

• New

  Paperback
  2003

  $11.93

  Meet Kate Reddy, 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. A victim of time famine, Kate counts seconds like other women count calories. As she hurtles between appointments, through her head spools the crazy tape-loop of the working mother's life: must remember client reports, bouncy castles, transatlantic phone call, nativity play, check Dow Jones, cancel hygienist, squeeze sagging pelvic floor, make time for sex. Factor in a manipulative nanny, an Australian boss who looks at Kate's breasts as if they're on special offer, a long suffering husband, her quietly aghast in-laws, two needy children and an e-mail lover, and you have a woman juggling so many balls that some day soon something's going to hit the ground. In an uproariously funny and achingly sad novel, Allison Pearson captures the guilty secret lives of working mothers, the self-recriminations, comic deceptions, forgeries, giddy exhaustion and despair as no other writer has ever done. With fierce irony and a sparkling style, she brilliantly dramatises the dilemma of working motherhood at the start of the 21st century.