I Don't Know How She Does It

Synopsis

women's Magazines Talk In Awed Terms About A Type Of Woman Called The Juggler - An Omnipresent, Omnicompetent Woman Who Is Able To Have It All. Flipping Between Marriage, Childrearing, And An Aggressive Career Path, The Juggler Handles Every Minute With Perfection. Kate Reddy Is Just Such A Woman. A Hedge Fund Trader, She Can Juggle Nine Different Currencies In Five Different Time Zones And Get Herself And Two Children Washed, Dressed, And Out Of The House In Under Thirty Minutes. But In Order To Keep This Juggernaut Of Split-second Timing Going, Kate Must Meet The Highest Of Expectations - Her Own. Allison Pearson Captures The Guilty Secret Lives Of Working Women - The Self-recrimination, The Comic Deceptions, The Giddy Exhaustion, The Despair - Like No Other Writer.

the New Yorker

this Novel About The Roller-coaster Ride Of Modern Motherhood Brings Its Thrills And Travails Into Such Terrifying Focus That It's Practically An Imax Experience, With Lego, Disney Videos, And Corporate E-mails Flying At You From All Directions. It Opens At 1 A.m. In The Kitchen Of Thirty-five-year-old Kate Reddy, Hedge-fund Manager And Mother Of Two, Who Is Hitting Sainsbury Mince Pies With A Rolling Pin So That They Can Pass For Home-made At Her Daughter's School: Now We Can Manage The Orgasms, But We Have To Fake The Mince Pies. And They Call This Progress. The Novel's Title Refers To A Remark Frequently Made By Kate's Smug Stay-at-home Contemporaries, Usually Right After They've Asked When She's Switching To Part-time. But How Long, In Fact, will Kate Be Able To Do It -- The Sleepless Nights, The Piggish Colleagues, The Censorious In-laws, The Text Message From The Nanny, Received Mid-meeting, Informing Her That She May Have Lice? Pearson Provides A Suspenseful And Entertaining Answer To This Question, But Along The Way She Asks Some Equally Tricky Ones About The Way We Live Now.