Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
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I Don’t Know How She Does It By Allison Pearson “Any working mother who says she doesn’t bribe her kids can add Liar to her CV.” That’s one of heroine Kate Reddy’s hundreds of laugh-out-loud funny thoughts in Allison’s Pearson’s debut best-selling novel, I Don’t Know How She Does It. This book is an anthem for working moms, the kind of book you’ll call your friends on the phone to read to because you just know they need to hear it - like this passage written at 12:39 A.M., “Too tired for sleep. . . A good mum makes her own jam, doesn’t she? Secretly, we all know that. When they start naming preserves Jet Lag Mama or Quality Time Mum, when bread comes in wrappers marked Father’s Pride, it will be safe for us bad, exhausted mothers to come out with our hands up.”
At first I thought that I Don’t Know How She Does It, as funny as it was, was critical of moms who choose to stay home with their children, and then I realized what Kate Reddy realizes – all moms are working moms, especially stay at home moms. Duh! The book has been widely compared to Bridget Jones’ Diary, but I like Kate Reddy more than I liked Bridget. She tries so hard to be everything to everyone until finally . . . oh . . . I’m always forgetting not to give away the ending.
For every mom who goes to sleep while writing to-do lists in her head, for every husband of one of those moms, for every lover of a superior first novel from a new writer, I recommend I Don’t Know How She Does It, now in its tenth week on the New York Times’ Bestseller List. On the book beat for KSL Newsradio 1160, I’m Amanda Dickson.
