Product Description

She can break your balls
Kate Reddy’s tough on men and the causes of men.
She will break your heart
Don’t read this book in public. People hate to see a grown man cry.
You sleep with her
Now wake up to her
What you don’t know about women would fill a book.
This is that book

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #236384 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
Allison Pearson has developed her columns in the Daily Telegraph about the struggles of working mum Kate Reddy into a full-length novel, with astounding success. Scathing, poignant and wickedly funny, this is a tale for our times, as Kate faces up to the impossibility of keeping her boss, her children and her husband happy, let alone finding some time for herself. Kate Reddy has a high-flying job in a City firm, a precocious Disney-besotted five-year-old and an adorable mother-fixated toddler. Her husband's laissez-faire attitude drives her to distraction, she's fiendishly jealous of the nanny and she knows she's an object of scorn to the local non-working mothers known as the 'Muffia'. The novel opens as Kate is busily 'distressing' Sainsbury's mince pies for the school Nativity play in a desperate attempt to make them look homemade. During the following pages she contends with chauvinistic work colleagues, critical parents-in-law, multi-million dollar presentations and a burgeoning love affair conducted almost exclusively by e-mail. Starved of the time to spend with her family, she suffers agonies of guilt when she lets them down for the umpteenth time as she jets off to Frankfurt or New York with memos about bouncy castles, hamsters and schools for Emily hammering away inside her head. Allison Pearson perfectly captures the guilty freneticism of many working mothers; there are touches of pure comedy when Kate's frantic attempts to remember everything come embarrassingly unstuck, and she seems to be watching herself going out of control with a detached, fascinated horror. Juggling all these balls in the air is becoming increasingly tricky - before long, something is going to come crashing down. Many women will laugh hollowly as they see their own experiences reflected in Kate's demented race against time, as she feels duty-bound to do everything and please everyone, and Pearson makes several biting comments about the real difference between the sexes, in terms of expectations and their roles as parents. A truly compulsive read. (Kirkus UK)

FT Magazine
'Pioneering 2002 novel.'

About the Author
Allison Pearson is an award-winning journalist who has weekly columns in the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard. A founder member of BBC 2’s ‘Late Review’, she broadcasts regularly on TV and radio. She lives in London with the New Yorker writer Anthony Lane and their two small children.

Customer Reviews

Working mother read the story of your life
Any working mother will see the story of her life in this book. Kate Reddy has all the problems any working mother deals with every day, the nanny who is late and does not perform as one would expect, the children that catch a bug when you travel for work, and the absolute man universe of the working enviroment.
It is very well written, very humouros and absolutely truthful!

Brilliant
When I read this, for the first time I understood what life was like for my mother when I was a kid and and she was trying to hold down her demanding job in London and sort out me and my sister and I now understand how under appreciated she was. A realistic novel, this is how alot of woman are and for once this is a book that does not have the heroine as a wimpy perfect mother. She is real, she has ambition and she is trying to please her kids. I loved this as much as I loved Briget Jones' Diary. I found it funny and sad but most of all true to life about how modern mothers feel trying to hold down a good job and bring up good kids.Fantastic.

Reflections full of whit and heartbreaking observations
It's not often I laugh outloud when reading a book. Especially when surrounded by suited men, typing away on laptops in business class.

I loved this book! It is both funny and heartbreaking. I found myself idenitfying strongly with Kate, but angry that she had let things get into such a state!

Of course you cannot have your cake and eat it! (Even though many of us try - I have never faked home made mince pies at 1am, but I have been up to my elbows in flour making flakey pastry at midnight)

Compromises and choices have to be made. The choices are hard, nobody is denying this. You are much better off sorting out what you really want in life rather than trying to please everyone and succeeding only in annoying, alienating and disappoint those you love and yourself.

This book is definitely NOT a recipe for how to balance you life or how to be a super woman!

But, for all those super women out there, sometimes reading a novel and laughing can help you recognise your own behaviour and recognition paves the way to choice........