I Don't Know How She Does It - Allison Pearson

Kate Reddy would appear to have it all, high flying career, loving husband and two lovely children. However, she’s a woman juggling too many balls and in danger of gong mad. I don’t know how she does it follows a year in the life of 35 year old funds manager Kate Reddy. The book grew out of a column in the Daily Telegraph, it consists of diary entries chronicling Kate’s chaotic life. Kate’s day to day life has every spare minute filled with her demanding job and family. Each daily entry ends with a to do list with more things on it than I usually manage in a week. As the book progresses Kate begins to feel more and more frustrated, her job involves ...  Read the complete review

Look up the word “busy” in a dictionary and, if it were the kind of world where random people’s faces were used to illustrate meanings, you’d see a picture of Kate Reddy. Fund Manager, mother of two, devoted wife (or not), our heroine is the type of person who thinks sleeping is a waste of precious time. Why, think of all the important tasks you could accomplish in those 6 to 8 hours every night. Sleep? Sleep is for wusses. “I Don’t Know How She Does It” follows Kate through a year of her life, and what a frantic year it turns out to be: tales of divorce, pregnancy, affairs, incompetent staff, revolting subordinates, stroppy ...  Read the complete review

“I Don’t Know How She Does It” is a novel by Allison Pearson about Kate Reddy a fund manager and mother of 2 small children. It’s described as “A comedy about failure, a tragedy about success.” Kate’s main problem is there is not enough hours in the day to get everything done that she needs to do. She works long hours trying to prove to her male colleagues that after having a baby her brain still works and she is still capable of doing her job. Meanwhile her children long for her to be there to put them to bed and to read them a goodnight story which more often than not she isn’t home in time to do. On top of all this she has a manipulative nanny who gives ...  Read the complete review

My mother recommended this book to me, and being an avid reader in search of some lighter reading I thought I would enjoy it. I am a semi-fan of chic-lit. I enjoyed "Bookends" by Jane Green but hated most of her other stuff. "Rachel's Holiday" is excellent, "Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married" is not. I thought "I don't know how she does it" would appeal to me as a mother who works PART-TIME, but this was strictly the story of a mother who is juggling a more-than-full-time job with everything else coming way down on her list, including her kids. The synopsis is as follows: Kate Reddy works as a fund manager in a ...  Read the complete review