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    I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother
    Unavailable
    I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother
    Unavailable
    I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

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

    Written by Allison Pearson

    Narrated by Emma Fielding

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    For every woman trying to strike that impossible balance between work and home-and pretending that she has-and for every woman who has wanted to hurl the acquaintance who coos admiringly, "Honestly, I just don't know how you do it," out a window, here's a novel to make you cringe with recognition and laugh out loud. With fierce, unsentimental irony, Allison Pearson's novel brilliantly dramatizes the dilemma of working motherhood at the start of the twenty-first century.

    Meet Kate Reddy, hedge-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. In Kate's life, Everything Goes Perfectly as long as Everything Goes Perfectly. She lies to her own mother about how much time she spends with her kids; practices pelvic floor squeezes in the boardroom; applies tips from Toddler Taming to soothe her irascible boss; uses her cell phone in the office bathroom to procure a hamster for her daughter's birthday ("Any working mother who says she doesn't bribe her kids can add Liar to her résumé"); and cries into the laundry hamper when she misses her children's bedtime.

    In a novel that is at once uproariously funny and achingly sad, Allison Pearson captures the guilty secret lives of working women-the self-recrimination, the comic deceptions, the giddy exhaustion, the despair-as no other writer has. Kate Reddy's conflict --How are we meant to pass our days? How are we to reconcile the two passions, work and motherhood, that divide our lives? --gets at the private absurdities of working motherhood as only a novel could: with humor, drama, and bracing wisdom.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 1, 2002
    ISBN9780739301739
    Unavailable
    I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother
    Author

    Allison Pearson

    Allison Pearson was born in South Wales. She is a columnist and feature writer for the Daily Telegraph. Allison’s first novel, I Don’t Know How She Does It, was an international bestseller; translated into 32 languages it was made into a movie of the same name. Oprah Winfrey called the book ‘A Bible for the working mother’. Allison lives in Cambridge with her family and two poodles. You can find her on Twitter @allisonpearson

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    Reviews for I Don't Know How She Does It

    3.5/5

    477 ratings31 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      kind of fun
    • 2/5
      Kate doesn't learn her lesson the first time around. Also, it burns my biscuits when a woman says that women don't know anything until they pop out babies. BLECH.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed meeting Kate Reddy, a high-powered working mother of two whose attempts to keep work, home, marriage and LIFE in balance are described with, as the book cover reads, "panache, wisdom, and uproarious wit." Too bad some of the funny parts weren't even explicable to my dear husband and son, who watched my giggles in puzzlement.
    • 5/5
      When I heard that this movie was based on the book, I decided to read the book first before seeing the movie. What I loved about this story was that it is set in London and did a great job at transporting the reader to the UK with scenery descriptions and dialect. I also enjoyed the main character Kate Reddy. She isn't your typical working mother. She is a hedge fund
      manager for a big corporation and works more than 40 hours a week, travels constantly, has a nanny & an architect husband that earns less than she does. She struggles with wanting a career and wanting to be a better mother to her children and wife to her husband but seems to continue to put work first. The author does an excellent job at examining the issues women face in the workforce as well as at home and the struggle of balancing everything. I liked how much passion she had for her job but I was a little upset that she made it seem like her children were a joy but also an interruption to her life. She addressed that issue in the story very well. I laughed out loud a lot as I read this book and sympathized with many of the man-women relationship problems that we all struggled with. The character was a strong, smart female and the ending was very good. I also liked that the author selected a main character that did not have an easy childhood or a silver spoon. She worked hard to get out of the life she was born into and appreciated the sacrifices. I enjoyed the whole story but wish it was shorter. Too much filler and fluff at times but not too annoying in that area. I know the movie will not do the story justice but I am looking forward to seeing how the two compare.
    • 1/5
      The book annoyed me. I never finished it. The charachters were not comfortable as women in business or as working mothers. The situtations were funny but the feelings of being inferior or rather thinking everyone thinks of working mother as inferior annoyed me.
    • 4/5
      I really liked it! Couldn't put it down. I just hate how they are going to change the story for the movie.
    • 2/5
      I stopped reading this before finishing it. The main character was making me crazy with her whining, and the stay-at-home mom vs. working mom theme was annoying to someone who has been both. I will say that there were funny moments, but they weren't enough to hold my interest.
    • 3/5
      I started reading this book because I saw the movie was coming out and, even though I didn't plan on seeing the movie, I like to read the books before it's in theaters. However, I just couldn't get into the book. I found it funny and enjoyable but not enough to really capture my interest. A lot of the humor was spot on, especially for moms. Maybe in the future if I decide to re-read it, I will be able to get into it more.
    • 4/5
      Busting the myth that we can have it all, this book makes it pretty clear that there are always compromises that have to be made by mothers. Kate, for fictional purposes though I know that there are more than a few Kates around, is at one extreme of the mythical work/life balance but there are general realities that can make a mother wince and laugh and cry. I have been both a full time working mum, a stay at home mum and a part time working working mum (4 kids) and in every situation I have had someone say "I don't know how you do it". Yes, this is chick lit so it's not a thoughtful treatise and it descends into caricature regulary but its still worth the read*, even just to feel better about staying late at the office again tonight. (*unless you don't have kids yet, because the truth is scarier than fiction)
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book. Th main character, Kate Reddy, had a lot of the same thoughts I have about life as a working mom making it very easy to relate to her.
    • 3/5
      This book is hilarious; I had so many laugh-out-loud experiences, I'm sure my husband thought I was going crazy. Kate's description of how her husband had dressed the baby to go out to a party once literally had me laughing in tears. My only complaint was the repetitive comparisons between working mothers and stay-at-home mothers: you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. But overall a very funny read.
    • 4/5
      This book reminded me a lot of Bridget Jones' Diary, but for some reason I liked it so much more. It is about a busy working mother with two young children at home and a boss who has no understanding of motherhood. At the beginning of the book, Kate was as endlessly annoying as Bridget Jones, but about halfway through she started growing on me. I think it was around the point she crawled out on the ledge of her office building in an attempt to save some nesting pigeons.
    • 2/5
      I just want to start off by saying I do not have a career, a husband or children. I do think, however, that my work at the Daily Evergreen last semester could have filled in for all of these things. Although I don't have any of these things, I generally enjoy reading books about people who do. I also love books set in other countries (England, Ireland, Australia, etc) because it makes me feel like I am there for just a little while. This book as all of these things, but somehow it lacked the abillity to really grab my attention. It took me a while to get into it and I never really connected or truly cared about any of the characters, except for 6-year-old Emily, who is actually a pretty minor character.
    • 4/5
      Bridget Jones gets married and has children. Recommended.
    • 5/5
      There were parts of this book when I was shocked how much it mirrored my own life and my own experiences with my in-laws! This book really made me feel like I am not the only one who compares herself to the stay-at-home moms and feeling like I just can't get it all together, trying to balance everything, but also loving my career. Very well-written book, though the British colloquialisms were a little difficult to decipher at times!
    • 3/5
      I had to give this 3 stars, because I did want to finish it, but I didn't really like it. I kept asking myself not so much 'I don't know how she does it', as 'I don't know why she does it'! Very irritating protagonist. And yes, I am a working mother, but not to that extent - the bottom line is, you can't have it all because there isn't enough time!
    • 5/5
      to me this is a very special book, even though it's not perfect
    • 4/5
      Audio book. Very humourous story of a woman balancing a high-flying career and the social expectations of her role as a wife and mother to 2 small children in wealthy London.
    • 4/5
      Engaging from the first chapter - I loved reading about the heroine, Kate - a working mom who is the main breadwinner for her family as high power stockbroker type. She mourns that she can't be the perfect mother to her children, but scoffs at the moms in the neighborhood and at school who have made their children their priority and quit work. She doesn't really know how to get out of the life she has, but knows she does want it to slow down somehow. I didn't fall in love with the character of Kate, but I did totally enjoy reading about her chaotic life.
    • 3/5
      I liked the whole prtense of the book. But you just KNEW she was going to give it all up and quit her job. Which I didn't like!! I would rather have seen her do it all. GLad she didn't have the affair also.12/24/02
    • 2/5
      Enjoyable reading but not a must. Disappointingly foreseeable. Totally identified with Kate Reddy.
    • 3/5
      Some spoiler here - While well-written and at times amusing, I found this book tough-going at times. Kate's work life just seemed too difficult and frustrating. A lot of the time I wanted to grab Kate out of the book and give her a good shake. The last part of the book was quite poignant at times (esp. about her own mother) and I think she did the right thing, but this reflects my own philosophy. I do think the book was too long. I also thought Kate let everyone else make decisions for her (including her generation's view on careers) right up to the "incident" at work at the end. She never really said - this is what I believe in so I will do it. It took a very bad workplace event to make her leave. So in that sense she comes across as somewhat weak. Overall a good read but nothing very new in terms of women's lives.
    • 5/5
      Of all the books passed round our book group last year this was probbaly the favourite....I thought I was the only person in the world who used to buy mince pies and them rough them up a bit so that they looked homemade on the PTAs Xmas cake stall.
    • 4/5
      Someone told me they didn't like this book because it was too real. That is exactly what I liked about this book. It's very british and a few phrases through me, but completely affirming for us former career girls.
    • 4/5
      Kind of a typical story, but great insights into motherhood.
    • 4/5
      Great book club pick - perfect for those mom's who try to raise a family & work.
    • 2/5
      Being a singleton of 25, this book made me never want to have children. While it was interesting to read about a different stage of a woman's life (other than searching for a husband, that is), the writing here didn't quite live up to my expectations. It did exceed typical chick-lit offerings, but the style was basically cribbed from Helen Fielding, with a to-do list at the end of each chapter, rather than a weight/cigarette inventory. The ending's a total cop out, and sends some mixed messages about working mothers. I don't quite know what to make of it.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book: so slyly funny, so sad, and the ending felt like the movie Baby Boom (but not nearly as sappy).
    • 1/5
      I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother [Kindle Edition](October 1, 2002)I saw the advertisement today on TV for the movie made about this book. It looked to be fun, funny and engrossing so I immediately bought the book without ever reading any of the reviews. I greedily jumped right in reading and found myself after a few chapters, falling asleep. Now a book that got the reviews it did, shouldn’t put one in a stupor should it? Frankly my motto is “don’t judge a BOOK by its movie”, in other words books are always much better than the movies right? I’m afraid I did the reverse with this book; I judged the book by the movie preview and now I’m going to beg Amazon for my 12$ back. I realize that most likely when this book first came out it was different from the other books about women out there. Most likely, at the time it was edgy, funny and even thought provoking. Now it just seems trite, with an annoying female lead (Kate), annoying secondary characters (husband, children, nanny, etc) an overused and largely predictable plot and I can’t stress enough, a very annoying nearly dislikable main character. It is slow to get off the ground, and actually never even manages to hover let alone soar. This book is filled with so much inner angst, repetition of thoughts and trivialities that I just wanted to throw the book against the wall—unfortunately, it is on my Kindle. Allison Pearson should have done a little research before she wrote this book because she made one of her characters nearly exactly like one from the movie “Baby Boom” which came out before her book did.Please, please don’t make the same mistake I did in thinking that you’d like to read the book before you go to the movie---save your cash---I really wish I did.
    • 4/5
      This book came out when I was a stay-at-home mom and the last thing I wanted to do was to read about how hard a working mom had it.No. That sounds harsh. And it isn't completely true. It was complicated being a stay-at-home mom. Not in the practical way- I didn't really have a career to speak of and wasn't working enough to make a huge difference to our income before having children, so it was logical that J should be the one in the workforce and I look after the kids. Besides I wanted to. I wanted to be at home when they were young. I would like to say that I did this without any judgment on my part for the women who chose to go back to work when their children were babies. Intellectually, I rocked it. Everyone makes the decision that is right for them, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in my heart I just couldn't understand. But the thing about being a stay-at-home mom is that there is a lot of guilt for not doing anything more than raising your kids, for not being a working mother. Although they don't mean to, or they don't think they do, people judge you too. Nobody wants to say it, but the word lazy is always hovering in the background.Anyways. I finally picked up the book as one of my colleagues at work was on my case about reading it and the movie is coming out soon. And, as I frequently tell my children, you should always read the book before you see the movie.So. Kate Reddy is a senior in a major finance firm in London (don't ask me what her actual title is, I can't remember). She also happens to be a mother of two, a fact that does mix very well with the cut throat, old boys club environment she works in. The book describes the avalanche of her life as she tries to keep it from crumbling beneath her feet.It was supposed to be funny. I guess if your idea of humour is watching an A-type woman distress pies to make them look homemade, watch her maneuver and manipulate the infantile men at her job, completely ignore her husband and children, but still throw elaborate birthday parties for them while trying to keep her head above the rough waters of her mental list then yes. It was funny. For me I just found it tiring. However, I was surprised at the caliber of the writing. I had assumed it was just another chick lit book à la Nanny Diaries, but it was way better written than that. Still. Don't make me deal with other people's mental lists. My own is long enough as it is.