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Allison Pearson Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Allison Pearson

Allison Pearson

Allison Pearson Biography

Allison Pearson is the author of the hugely bestselling I Don't Know How She Does It, which became a major motion picture starring Sarah Jessica Parker, and I Think I Love You. Pearson was named Newcomer of the Year at the British Book Awards for her first book. She has written for The Daily Telegraph, The Times (UK), The Daily Mail, Time, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Observer and countless other publications. Pearson has won many awards including Columnist of the Year, Critic of the Year and Interviewer of the Year. She lives in Cambridge, England, with the New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane, and their two children.

Allison Pearson's website

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Interview

Allison Pearson discusses why she wrote her immensely successful first novel about a high powered woman juggling business and family commitments, her suggestions for other women looking to climb the corporate ladder and the animosity between 'working women' and 'stay at home mothers'.

This is your first novel. What made you decide to write it?
I read a Stress Survey in Good Housekeeping magazine two years ago. It said that all that most working women wanted for Mother's Day was a bit of time to themselves. It also said they were too tired to have sex with their husbands and felt they were failing both at work and as a parent. I thought about my life and the lives of my friends with young children and I realized we were all being driven crazy by the pressure we were under juggling work and family. I thought it was a great subject - borderline farce, but full of incredibly poignant moments as you find yourself torn between responsibility to your children and the office. I wrote an article about working mothers in my opinion column in the London Evening Standard and I got literally hundreds of letters from women, all saying: That's My Life! It felt as though I'd opened a small door onto a parallel world and on the other side was this huge amount of unacknowledged feeling.

Then, I attended a discussion on work-life balance at the London Business School and the professional women in the room started to share their stories. One lawyer stood up and said she had intercepted a memo from ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Allison Pearson at BookBrowse
How Hard Can It Be? jacket I Think I Love You jacket I Don't Know How She Does It jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Allison Pearson but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

We recommend 6 similar authors

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