I Don’t Know How She Does It really makes you consider issues of quality v. quantity, and what a meaningful life looks like on a very personal level. As for the sexism, Allison Pearson is sharp and witty and really fires you up for women’s rights.
The prequel to How Hard Can It Be?
Meet Kate Reddy, fund manager and mother of two. Always time-poor, Kate counts seconds like other women count calories. 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 email lover, and you have a woman juggling so many balls that some day something’s going to hit the ground.
In an uproariously funny and achingly sad novel, Allison Pearson brilliantly dramatises the dilemma of working motherhood at the start of the twenty-first century.
If you could buy stock in a book, I would stake all my savings on the success of I Don’t Know How She Does It. Here at last is the definitive social comedy of working motherhood – Washington Post
Funny, fast and full of nail-on-the-head observations – Daily Telegraph