I Don't Know How She Does It : The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother

Rating:
Summary: A must-read
Review: I expected this to be a comical romp, instead I found a wonderful novel that made my heart ache with compassion and understanding. Of course, there were laugh-out-loud moments, but interwoven was a very true thing. Those reviewers who just didn't get it, have simply never known the joys and pains of motherhood and how they swirl about in a career world. Having worked full-time as an executive with baby #1, and then on to full-time mom for baby #2, I've seen both sides of the coin and Ms. Pearce nails it, perhaps at times in a caricature kind of way, but nonetheless heartbreakingly with truth. This is a book I will recommend to other moms, but would not recommend to a man...because I just don't know how he would get it.

Rating:
Summary: Mmmmm...like Chocolate...extremely addictive
Review: The book makes excellent reading. Illuminates several key issues about modern womanhood and work-family conflict in a humourous yet realistic style . Although not a mother, there were several times where I felt an eerie recognition with the constraints women face when having to battle a flourishing career with married life. The book knows no cultural boundaries and is narrated in a style that every woman reader across the globe single or married can relate to. The downside is that it provides a rather discouraging perspective for career women about achieving a balance between work and family.
I think more than the women, men should be reading this one!
The book definitely struck a chord with me!!!

Rating:
Summary: When it comes to love--Caveat Emptor!
Review: The failure of so many of today's women to develop the capacity for deep emotional attachment, and empathy, comes through in this brilliant, very entertaining tragi-comic novel. Kate, a married, hard driving investment professional and a mother of 2 young children. She can't form empathetic bonds with her children, or with her husband. Kate is clueless about the inherent emotional magic of young children. The novel makes clear her parents were very emotionally constricted people who divorced around the time of Kate's puberty.

As a psychiatrist, I believe the failure to develop the capacity for effective loving and empathy derive from neurophysiological developmental failures the result of most children nowadays being daycare and nanny raised. We all know unaffectionately handled puppies, kittens and infant primates have problems successfully mating, and caring for their young. Such would be all the more true for humans. It's one thing for day care raised children to meet basic age appropriate cognitive developmental milestones, e.g. reading, but quite another to eventually possess the rich emotional skills required for a stable marriage with children. Women seem more affected than men. In my mid-60s, and having raised 4 children, I'm simply astounded by the emotional shallowness of contemporary female sexuality. What could marital love mean to a women who has been with dozens of men before her husband?

Kate's unloving core behavior illustrates the absurdity of the romantic predicate of modern marriage. Kate falls in love with business contact. A female subordinate asks her, " 'I'm sorry, Kate, but do you the know the guy?' to which Kate replies, 'No, I don't'...I don't know Jack but I may be in love with him...How can you be in love with someone you don't know? It's probably easier, isn't it, all things considered. A blank screen you can type all your longings on."


Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: My short list of recommendations of new literature is rather predictable: "My Fractured Life" (RENT-generation book of hope, glory and despair as a modern version of "Catcher in the Rye"); "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" (uplifting modern version of "It's a Wonderful Life"); "The Secret Life of Bees" (an uplifting story of racial equality and spiritual healing of a young girl coming of age in the South); and "The Lovely Bones" (life observed from the view of a girl who has been murdered). Right on the cusp though is this more nontraditional book, "I Don't Know How She Does It". "I Don't Know How She Does It" makes a strong statement and in a beautiful voice. It is both funny and sincere, much like the quick wit of "My Fractured Life". It may be an untraditional choice for a must read recommendation, but it sincerely ranks along side the other outstanding ones.

Rating:
Summary: High Brow Chick Lit
Review: Smart, witty and fun. Every sentence sparkles. The character real and lovable. It won't disappoint.

Rating:
Summary: Fun, Fast, Frothy and Sad
Review: This debut novel by Brit writer Allison Pearson is at the same time typical fun and breezy Brit Lit, and more...it's a truly devastating look at working mothers and the toll their work takes on their marriages, their mothering and their lives. All ensconced in the frothy, fast and fun tone typical of the genre, the book nevertheless tackles some truly serious issues...and tackles them well.

Having been on the Mommy Track, having agonized every time I had a sick child and had to be at work rather than at home making soup, I sympathized heartily with Kate Reddy, fast-track female superstar in the all-male world of stocks and bonds. Star of her company, Kate pays and pays and pays as no male colleague would ever be expected to do: It's her nanny Paula who knows how much baby Ben weighs; it's Paula who knows what 6-year-old Emily likes to eat. And it's Paula they turn to for comort. And Kate's husband Richard? Somebody with whom to share the chores and exchange one-sentence orders in the morning; somebody to turn away from at night from sheer exhaustion.

Something has to give in Kate's world, but what? Her marriage? Her career? Her sanity? Her soul? We don't have the answer until the very end of the book, and even then we are left to wonder why only women have to make these decisions.

A truly delightful easy-to-read book, but one with some meat on its bones. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular Book for Working Moms!
Review: If you are a working mother with a high power job this book will really resonate with you. Ms. Pearson brings Kate to life with her wonderful literary style. The book is both moving and laugh out loud funny! I was astounded by the similarities we share with women in the UK and that husbands are the same everywhere ;-). Best book I've read in a long time. I'm sharing it with all my working mother friends!

Rating:
Summary: A Life in Chaos!
Review: Warning: this book can induce symptoms of fatigue, crankiness, panic and sadness! While being a quick and witty read, I Don't Know How She Does It expresses so eloquently the main character's pain at juggling her career as a cut throat fund manager and her role as a mother, the reader feels those emotions as their own.

Kate Reddy, a married mother of two, living in wealthy North London, is a director at a top financial firm. Trying desperately to hold on to her seniority at work, she finds herself caught between two half lives of domesticity and big business. While initially it can be difficult to sympathize with Kate, who complains constantly and appears somewhat of a martyr in her determination not to relinquish her control over everything, her self imposed frenzy becomes more believable as the reader realizes that it is part of Kate's flawed but lovable character. There is a good dose of humor thrown in when the going gets a little too tough for this to be a lighthearted read. - funnier moments reveal Kate scrabbling to fake home made mince pies for the School Christmas bake sale, revealing her lacy Agent Provocateur bra to the boardroom and discovering that her husband has mistakenly dressed the baby in a doll's outfit.

Nevertheless this is a cautionary tale for those of us who plan to " do it all", as the moral of the story is; it is best to do something well, than do everything badly. I Don't Know How She Does It is a refreshing change from the tired literary genre of self obsessed twenty some things trying to find a man and make it big. Kate Reddy gives those of us who haven't yet reproduced a glimpse into the future of career and family and gives working mothers a shoulder to cry on.


Rating:
Summary: Two moms agree: This book was a cop-out
Review: I read this book when a co-worker and friend of mine, a working mom whose husband is a SAHD, suggested I read it (I was pregnant at the time). Apparently, a well-meaning friend of her had given it to her. My friend had issues with the book, but she thought maybe I'd like it.

Well, I didn't HATE it. It was a quick and easy read, maybe good beach reading. But I got tired of the narrator's whining real fast. I couldn't understand why she felt the need to constantly compare herself to these so-called supermoms who had the time to slave over treats for the kiddies' bake sales, or who spent every hour of their days (apparently) doing things to make their homes and families "perfect." Ugh. Me, I tune those people out. So I guess I was very frustrated with the narrator, Kate, for NOT tuning these people out, and for not tuning the media out. I mean, honestly, the best thing moms can do is stop trying to act like good moms in the eyes of anyone except our own kids!

Plus, the ending (which I'll try not to spoil, though I've seen a couple of reviews that have--be forewarned!) is both unrealistic and a cop-out. Not because those types of things don't happen--but usually, anytime people make huge lifestyle changes, they sit down and work out the ramifications of them with their spouses; they have discussions with their confidants to get ideas as to whether something will work.

Rather, in the style of a novice writer who has written a funny story but can't think of a decent ending, this book just *BOOM* ends. It's all very thrown-together-at-the-last-minute, not calculated or thought out.

Rating:
Summary: A composite caricature in a mean-spirited cautionary tale
Review: There are some very, very funny moments in this book. However, as this book continued, this character rang false for me, which detracted substantially from the humor. Kate is a caricatured composite of a "career woman" combined with a grab-bag of anecdotes about what can go wrong when one tries to combine family life with a high-powered career. It is as if a group of women sat around swapping clever quotes, jokes and horror stories about career moms, then tacked them all rather awkwardly into this story.

At the beginning I was willing to go with it as a story about the "days where everything goes horribly wrong". But this character consistently makes choices that do not make any sense in the real world, which, as far as I can tell, is just meant to make the plot spin more and more out of control. Since I don't know any mom who would make the bizarre, nonsensical choices this character continuously makes, after a while this just read like a somewhat mean-spirited cautionary fable, meant to convince women not to try to "have it all". Why is hubby sitting around while mom (who is out of town much more often) acts as gatekeeper, insisting that she controls the nanny, the shopping and the other domestic organization? Why is she so concerned about what the stay at home moms will think about her school bake-sale contribution, while caring so little about the actual mental and physical well-being of her kids? Why is she still acting like a single career gal who hasn't had to rethink her entire priority list, organizational plan and way of living?

For all of the real women I know who combine a career with motherhood (and for their spouses), pregnancy and having a first child meant a radical rethinking of how life worked--it meant bending a lot of the rules so that the system didn't break. I have a 5 and 2 year old...and a highly demanding career I love in a tough, male dominated field. It is wonderful and workable. While occasionally things will spin out of control, it seems completely non-sensical that anyone would just continue to unthinkingly and miserably rush through an unsustainable lifestyle that is no fun on either end, no good for the kids, the spouse or herself, without doing a lot of hard thinking about how to better balance things to make life workable.

Supposedly this woman has a 5 and 1 year old, so she's certainly had plenty of time for such a rethinking. Eventually, this strained Kate's credibility beyond my ability to enjoy her tale or relate to her. As far as I can tell, the answer to the questions I've just posed is that it is all just a plot device: in the end, (SPOILER ALERT!) the whole life-spinning-out-of-control does just break down, Kate gives up her high profile career, and she discovers she is so much happier. What a shame that Kate is still basically the same person at the end as the beginning...no more self-awareness, no more ability to do things based on her own sense of self and priorities, and to shelve the guilt and need to meet other people's diverse expectations about who she is. What a pointless exercise and wasted opportunity...