Summary and Reviews of I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson

Media Reviews

Washington Post - Marjorie Williams If you could buy stock in a book, I would stake all my savings on the success of Allison Pearson's new novel, I Don't Know How She Does It. Here, at last, is the definitive social comedy of working motherhood.

New York Times Book Review - Kate Betts [H]eartbreaking . . . Anyone who has pumped breast milk in the back of a taxi, or wept quietly into the laundry hamper after arriving home too late for a good-night kiss, will recognize herself in this sharply observed, sometimes painfully sad story about the sordid disparity between the ideal and the reality of 'having it all.'

Newsweek - Cathleen McGuigan What makes [Kate's] tale such a hoot are the spot-on details that crowd her life and her brain–and will be familiar to any woman who's ever tried to dress a squirming toddler while calling the office to explain why she's late . . . Pearson has an effortlessly smart style . . . I don't know a man on the planet who would get this book–or a woman who wouldn't.

Time - Margaret Carlson A sparkling novel about juggling marriage, kids, and job (and getting some sleep) . . . Nearly every female lucky enough to have both a child and a byline . . . has strip-mined Pearson's theme how to squeeze babies, marriage and a high-powered job into a day that cannot be stretched beyond 24 hours. But Pearson's Kate, a brisk, sardonic, loving world beater, has made it all fresh again.

Vogue - Sarah Lyall The fraught lives of modern women, especially those with children, is a classic theme of the age…But Pearson's book is refreshingly engaging because of the high quality of the prose and her uncanny ability to move from farce to pathos in the course of a single paragraph.

Booklist - Meredith Parets This terrific novel is alternately hilarious and sad, and the driven, irreverent Kate Reddy is the perfect companion for this headlong voyage into the world of a high-powered hedge fund manager and mother of two.

Kirkus Reviews An above-average addition to the crowded genre of working-mother-angst novels....The clever cattiness of the early chapters gives way to an earnest, endearing introspection that makes it possible for Kate to strike a more satisfying, if almost too-perfect-to-believe, balance between family and work. From the upper echelons of working mothers, a fictional answer to The Nanny Diaries--and likely to be as popular.

Library Journal Named both Critic of the Year and Interviewer of the Year at the British Press Awards, Pearson is also the mother of two. So she should know how protagonist Kate Reddy balances her job as hedge fund manager with being a mom.

Publishers Weekly .... as a hilarious and sometimes poignant update on contemporary women in the workplace, it's the book to beat.