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Frankly, I'm not sure how Allison Pearson, a British journalist
with two kids, managed to write this novel --- it's clear from her
account that time is the scarcest commodity in a working mother's
life and that the word multitasking doesn't even begin to
cover the controlled chaos she oversees.

In any case, I'm glad she did write it, even though my
working-mother days are over (and were never exactly desperate,
given three stepchildren well past toddlerhood and a husband
accustomed to being in charge). The story of Kate Reddy, financial
whiz in The City (the British equivalent of Wall Street) and mother
of two, is terrifically quick, amusing and (to use a dreadfully
outdated term) right-on. Discussing gender equality with her
reluctant male coworkers, she feels "like a vegan at an abbatoir."
Visiting her Yorkshire in-laws, she realizes that whereas at work
they think she's "deviant for having a life outside the office,"
people here think she's "a freak for having a job instead of a
life."

Kate's breezy ironic tone and madcap escapades make her a Bridget
Jones for working mothers, but I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT aspires
to be more than high-level Chick Lit. Although it may not be
exactly literary, it is emphatically literate and breathlessly
clever (especially the emails between Kate and her female friends,
and Kate and the American client who becomes a sort of virtual
lover). Further, it is almost sociological in its depiction of a
late twentieth-century female so keen to be the perfect mom as well
as the perfect career woman that she fakes homemade pies and jams
with store-bought. Kate is a self-described double agent ("[We] lie
for a living") dashing back and forth --- mentally as well as
physically --- between her job and her kids, with a lunge at her
husband now and then, guilty and angry most of the time. Every
chapter ends with a MUST REMEMBER list --- Kate's
crazed/hilarious/poignant messages to herself as she attempts over
and over (in vain) to get a handle on the competing sectors of her
life.

Now this material isn't exactly new. I'm not talking about Kate as
a close relation of Bridget Jones; I'm talking about her as a
descendant of the feminism of the '60s and '70s, with its rage over
the double standard (nailed beautifully by Pearson in a scene in
which a male colleague of Kate's leaves early for a child's
swimming event and is practically deified); its identification of
the double burden of housework/child care on top of one's
professional duties; its insistence (as in Betty Friedan's THE
FEMININE MYSTIQUE) that women need and deserve jobs outside the
home; its riveting novels (MEMOIRS OF AN EX-PROM QUEEN; FEAR OF
FLYING) that made every woman who read them feel, at last, that her
predicament was recognized and her anger validated.

True, I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT is stylistically distinct from
these feminist forebears, with many of the typical features of
recent popular fiction (brand names, email screwups, househusbands,
nannies), and Kate has a more brilliant career than most women
could aspire to 30 years ago. But the issues are basically the
same. This is depressing news, and in fact there is a wistfulness
to Kate Reddy's story despite the comedy --- a deep-down sadness
that suggests the working-mother dilemma is not really capable of
solution. Someone always loses.

Pearson is wonderfully skillful at recreating the tension when
parents socialize with childless couples (Kate has one of this
species for Sunday lunch, and everything that can go wrong of
course does), or when mothers with careers encounter mothers who
make a career of motherhood (a group she identifies as "the Muffia
--- the powerful stay-at-home cabal of organized mums").

She also manages a particularly difficult trick: telling the truth
about men without launching into petulant tirades against them. She
has Good Guys in the book (Kate's husband, a friend from work, her
American client), though there are many more crassly chauvinist
ones. But Kate's basic take on gender relations is bitterly
realistic. Growing up working-class in the North of England, with a
feckless dad and self-sacrificing mum, she realizes that "although
the men … took all the leading roles, it was the women who
were running the show." "… It was a matriarchy pretending to
be a patriarchy to keep the lads happy. I always thought that was
because where I came from people didn't get much of an education.
Now I think that's what the whole world's like, only some places
hide it better than others."

Despite such grim moments --- and because of them, too --- this
book was always a sharp pleasure to read. I made it last as long as
I could, but eventually I finished, and Kate Reddy's candid,
yearning voice vanished from my daily commute. I am bereft. Hurry
up and write another one, Allison Pearson!

Meanwhile, if you are now or ever have been a working mother, you
need I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT --- to make you feel less guilty
and alone, and to make you laugh (and cry) in rueful
self-recognition.