I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother

I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother

by Allison Pearson
I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother

I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother

by Allison Pearson

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Overview

Delightfully smart and heartbreakingly poignant, Allison Pearson’s smash debut novel has exploded onto bestseller lists as “The national anthem for working mothers.” Hedge-fund manager, wife, and mother of two, Kate Reddy manages to juggle nine currencies in five time zones and keep in step with the Teletubbies. But when she finds herself awake at 1:37 a.m. in a panic over the need to produce a homemade pie for her daughter’s school, she has to admit her life has become unrecognizable. With panache, wisdom, and uproarious wit, I Don’t Know How She Does It brilliantly dramatizes the dilemma of every working mom.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780375713750
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 08/26/2003
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 368
Sales rank: 565,203
Product dimensions: 5.15(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Allison Pearson, an award-winning journalist and author, is a staff writer for the London Daily Telegraph. Her first novel, I Don’t Know How She Does It, became an international bestseller and was translated into thirty-two languages. It was a major motion picture, adapted by Aline Brosh McKenna and starred Sarah Jessica Parker. Her most recent novel, I Think I Love You, is set to become a stage musical. She is a patron of Camfed, a charity that supports the education of more than a million African girls (www.camfed.org). She lives in London with her husband, the New Yorker writer Anthony Lane, and their two children.

Read an Excerpt

Home

Monday, 1:37 a.m. How did I get here? Can someone please tell me that? Not in this kitchen, I mean in this life. It is the morning of the school carol concert and I am hitting mince pies. No, let us be quite clear about this, I am distressing mince pies, an altogether more demanding and subtle process.

Discarding the Sainsbury luxury packaging, I winkle the pies out of their pleated foil cups, place them on a chopping board and bring down a rolling pin on their blameless floury faces. This is not as easy as it sounds, believe me. Hit the pies too hard and they drop a kind of fat-lady curtsy, skirts of pastry bulging out at the sides, and the fruit starts to ooze. But with a firm downward motion—imagine enough pressure to crush a small beetle—you can start a crumbly little landslide, giving the pastry a pleasing homemade appearance. And homemade is what I'm after here. Home is where the heart is. Home is where the good mother is, baking for her children.

All this trouble because of a letter Emily brought back from school ten days ago, now stuck on the fridge with a Tinky Winky magnet, asking if "parents could please make a voluntary contribution of appropriate festive refreshments" for the Christmas party they always put on after the carols. The note is printed in berry red and at the bottom, next to Miss Empson's signature, there is a snowman wearing a mortarboard and a shy grin. But do not be deceived by the strenuous tone of informality or the outbreak of chummy exclamation marks!!! Oh, no. Notes from school are written in code, a code buried so cunningly in the text that it could only be deciphered at Bletchley Park or by guilty women in the advanced stages of sleep deprivation.

Take that word "parents," for example. When they write parents what they really mean, what they still mean, is mothers. (Has a father who has a wife on the premises ever read a note from school? Technically, it's not impossible, I suppose, but the note will have been a party invitation and, furthermore, it will have been an invitation to a party that has taken place at least ten days earlier.) And "voluntary"? Voluntary is teacher-speak for "On pain of death and/or your child failing to gain a place at the senior school of your choice." As for "appropriate festive refreshments," these are definitely not something bought by a lazy cheat in a supermarket.

How do I know that? Because I still recall the look my own mother exchanged with Mrs. Frieda Davies in 1974, when a small boy in a dusty green parka approached the altar at Harvest Festival with two tins of Libby's cling peaches in a shoe box. The look was unforgettable. It said, What kind of sorry slattern has popped down to the Spar on the corner to celebrate God's bounty when what the good Lord clearly requires is a fruit medley in a basket with cellophane wrap? Or a plaited bread? Frieda Davies's bread, maneuvered the length of the church by her twins, was plaited as thickly as the tresses of a Rhinemaiden.

"You see, Katharine," Mrs. Davies explained later, doing that disapproving upsneeze thing with her sinuses over teacakes, "there are mothers who make an effort like your mum and me. And then you get the type of person who"—prolonged sniff—"don't make the effort."

Of course I knew who they were: Women Who Cut Corners. Even back in 1974, the dirty word had started to spread about mothers who went out to work. Females who wore trouser suits and even, it was alleged, allowed their children to watch television while it was still light. Rumors of neglect clung to these creatures like dust to their pelmets.

So before I was really old enough to understand what being a woman meant, I already understood that the world of women was divided in two: there were proper mothers, self-sacrificing bakers of apple pies and well-scrubbed invigilators of the washtub, and there were the other sort. At the age of thirty-five, I know precisely which kind I am, and I suppose that's what I'm doing here in the small hours of the thirteenth of December, hitting mince pies with a rolling pin till they look like something mother-made. Women used to have time to make mince pies and had to fake orgasms. Now we can manage the orgasms, but we have to fake the mince pies. And they call this progress.

"Damn. Damn. Where has Paula hidden the sieve?"

"Kate, what do you think you're doing? It's two o'clock in the morning!"

Richard is standing in the kitchen doorway, wincing at the light. Rich with his Jermyn Street pajamas, washed and tumbled to Babygro bobbliness. Rich with his acres of English reasonableness and his fraying kindness. Slow Richard, my American colleague Candy calls him, because work at his ethical architecture firm has slowed almost to a standstill, and it takes him half an hour to take the bin out and he's always telling me to slow down.

"Slow down, Katie, you're like that funfair ride. What's it called? The one where the screaming people stick to the side so long as the damn thing keeps spinning?"

"Centrifugal force."

"I know that. I meant what's the ride called?"

"No idea. Wall of Death?"

"Exactly."

I can see his point. I'm not so far gone that I can't grasp there has to be more to life than forging pastries at midnight. And tiredness. Deep-sea-diver tiredness, voyage-to-the-bottom-of-fatigue tiredness; I've never really come up from it since Emily was born, to be honest. Five years of walking round in a lead suit of sleeplessness. But what's the alternative? Go into school this afternoon and brazen it out, slam a box of Sainsbury's finest down on the table of festive offerings? Then, to the Mummy Who's Never There and the Mummy Who Shouts, Emily can add the Mummy Who Didn't Make an Effort. Twenty years from now, when my daughter is arrested in the grounds of Buckingham Palace for attempting to kidnap the king, a criminal psychologist will appear on the news and say, "Friends trace the start of Emily Shattock's mental problems to a school carol concert where her mother, a shadowy presence in her life, humiliated her in front of her classmates."

"Kate? Hello?"

"I need the sieve, Richard."

"What for?"

"So I can cover the mince pies with icing sugar."

"Why?"

"Because they are too evenly colored, and everyone at school will know I haven't made them myself, that's why."

Richard blinks slowly, like Stan Laurel taking in another fine mess. "Not why icing sugar, why cooking? Katie, are you mad? You only got back from the States three hours ago. No one expects you to produce anything for the carol concert."

"Well, I expect me to." The anger in my voice takes me by surprise and I notice Richard flinch. "So, where has Paula hidden the sodding sieve?"

Rich looks older suddenly. The frown line, once an amused exclamation mark between my husband's eyebrows, has deepened and widened without my noticing into a five-bar gate. My lovely funny Richard, who once looked at me as Dennis Quaid looked at Ellen Barkin in The Big Easy and now, thirteen years into an equal, mutually supportive partnership, looks at me the way a smoking beagle looks at a medical researcher—aware that such experiments may need to be conducted for the sake of human progress but still somehow pleading for release.

"Don't shout." He sighs. "You'll wake them." One candy-striped arm gestures upstairs where our children are asleep. "Anyway, Paula hasn't hidden it. You've got to stop blaming the nanny for everything, Kate. The sieve lives in the drawer next to the microwave."

"No, it lives right here in this cupboard."

"Not since 1997 it doesn't."

"Are you implying that I haven't used my own sieve for three years?"

"Darling, to my certain knowledge you have never met your sieve. Please come to bed. You have to be up in five hours."

Seeing Richard go upstairs, I long to follow him but I can't leave the kitchen in this state. I just can't. The room bears signs of heavy fighting; there is Lego shrapnel over a wide area, and a couple of mutilated Barbies—one legless, one headless—are having some kind of picnic on our tartan travel rug, which is still matted with grass from its last outing on Primrose Hill in August. Over by the vegetable rack, on the floor, there is a heap of raisins which I'm sure was there the morning I left for the airport. Some things have altered in my absence: half a dozen apples have been added to the big glass bowl on the pine table that sits next to the doors leading out to the garden, but no one has thought to discard the old fruit beneath and the pears at the bottom have started weeping a sticky amber resin. As I throw each pear in the bin, I shudder a little at the touch of rotten flesh. After washing and drying the bowl, I carefully wipe any stray amber goo off the apples and put them back. The whole operation takes maybe seven minutes. Next I start to swab the drifts of icing sugar off the stainless steel worktop, but the act of scouring releases an evil odor. I sniff the dishcloth. Slimy with bacteria, it has the sweet sickening stench of dead-flower water. Exactly how rancid would a dishcloth have to be before someone else in this house thought to throw it away?

I ram the dishcloth in the overflowing bin and look under the sink for a new one. There is no new one. Of course, there is no new one, Kate, you haven't been here to buy a new one. Retrieve old dishcloth from the bin and soak it in hot water with a dot of bleach. All I need to do now is put Emily's wings and halo out for the morning.

Have just turned off the lights and am starting up the stairs when I have a bad thought. If Paula sees the Sainsbury's cartons in the bin, she will spread news of my Great Mince Pie forgery on the nanny grapevine. Oh, hell. Retrieving the cartons from the bin, I wrap them inside yesterday's paper and carry the bundle at arm's length out through the front door. Looking right and left to make sure I am unobserved, I slip them into the big black sack in front of the house. Finally, with the evidence of my guilt disposed of, I follow my husband up to bed.

Through the landing window and the December fog, a crescent moon is reclining in its deck chair over London. Even the moon gets to put its feet up once a month. Man in the Moon, of course. If it was a Woman in the Moon, she'd never sit down. Well, would she?

I take my time brushing my teeth. A count of twenty for each molar. If I stay in the bathroom long enough, Richard will fall asleep and will not try to have sex with me. If we don't have sex, I can skip a shower in the morning. If I skip the shower, I will have time to start on the e-mails that have built up while I've been away and maybe even get some presents bought on the way to work. Only ten shopping days to Christmas, and I am in possession of precisely nine gifts, which leaves twelve to get plus stocking fillers for the children. And still no delivery from KwikToy, the rapid on-line present service.

"Kate, are you coming to bed?" Rich calls from the bedroom.

His voice sounds slurry with sleep. Good.

"I have something I need to talk to you about. Kate?"

"In a minute," I say. "Just going up to make sure they're OK."

I climb the flight of stairs to the next landing. The carpet is so badly frayed up here that the lip of each step looks like the dead grass you find under a marquee five days after a wedding. Someone's going to have an accident one of these days. At the top, I catch my breath and silently curse these tall thin London houses. Standing in the stillness outside the children's doors, I can hear their different styles of sleeping—his piglet snufflings, her princess sighs.

When I can't sleep and, believe me, I would dream of sleep if my mind weren't too full of other stuff for dreams, I like to creep into Ben's room and sit on the blue chair and just watch him. My baby looks as though he has hurled himself at unconsciousness, like a very small man trying to leap aboard an accelerating bus. Tonight, he's sprawled the length of the cot on his front, arms extended, tiny fingers curled round an invisible pole. Nestled to his cheek is the disgusting kangaroo that he worships—a shelf full of the finest stuffed animals an anxious parent can buy, and what does he choose to love? A cross-eyed marsupial from Woolworth's remainder bin. Ben can't tell us when he's tired yet, so he simply says Roo instead. He can't sleep without Roo because Roo to him means sleep.

It's the first time I've seen my son in four days. Four days, three nights. First there was the trip to Stockholm to spend some face time with a jumpy new client, then Rod Task called from the office and told me to get my ass over to New York and hold the hand of an old client who needed reassuring that the new client wasn't taking up too much of my time.

Benjamin never holds my absences against me. Too little still. He always greets me with helpless delight like a fan windmilling arms at a Hollywood premiere. Not his sister, though. Emily is five years old and full of jealous wisdom. Mummy's return is always the cue for an intricate sequence of snubs and punishments.

"Actually, Paula reads me that story."

"But I want Dadda to give me a bath."

Wallis Simpson got a warmer welcome from the Queen Mother than I get from Emily after a business trip. But I bear it. My heart sort of pleats inside and somehow I bear it. Maybe I think I deserve it.

I leave Ben snoring softly and gently push the door of the other room. Bathed in the candied glow of her Cinderella light, my daughter is, as is her preference, naked as a newborn. (Clothes, unless you count bridal or princess wear, are a constant irritation to her.) When I pull the duvet up, her legs twitch in protest like a laboratory frog. Even when she was a baby, Emily couldn't stand being covered. I bought her one of those zip-up sleep bags, but she thrashed around in it and blew out her cheeks like the God of Wind in the corner of old maps, till I had to admit defeat and gave it away. Even in sleep, when my girl's face has the furzy bloom of an apricot, you can see the determined jut to her chin. Her last school report said, Emily is a very competitive little girl and will need to learn to lose more gracefully.

"Remind you of anyone, Kate?," said Richard and let out that trodden-puppy yelp he has developed lately.

There have been times over the past hyear when I have tried to explain to my daugher—I felt she was old enough to hear this—why Mummy has to go to work. Because Mum and Ded both need to earn money to pay for our house and for all the things she enjoys doing like ballet lessons and going on holiday. Because Mummy has a job she is good at and it's really important for women to work as well as men. Each time the speech builds to a stirring climax —trumpets, choirs, the tearful sisterhood waving flags—in which I assure Emily that she will understand all of this when she is a big girl and wants to do interesting things herself.

Unfortunately, the case for equal opportunities, long established in liberal Western society, cuts no ice in the fundamentalist regime of the five-year-old. There is no God but Mummy, and Daddy is her prophet.

In the morning, when I'm getting ready to leave the house, Emily asks the same question over and over until I want to hit her and then all the way to work, I want to cry for having wanted to hit her.

"Are you putting me to bed tonight? Is Mummy putting me to bed tonight? Are you? Who is putting me to bed tonight? Are you, Mum, are you?"

Do you know how many ways there are of saying the word no without actually using the word no? Ido.

MUST REMEMBER

Angel wings. Quote for new stair carpet. Take lasagne out of freezer for Saturday lunch. Buy kitchen roll, stainless steel special polish thingy, present and card for Harry's party. How old is Harry? Five? Six? Must get organized with well-stocked present drawer like proper mother. Buy Christmas tree and stylish lights recommended in Telegraph (Selfridge's or Habitat? Can't remember. Damn.) Nanny's Christmas bribe/present (Eurostar ticket? Cash? DKNY?) Emily wants Baby Wee-Wee doll (over my dead body). Present for Richard (Wine-tasting? Arsenal? Pajamas), In-laws book—The Lost Gardens of Somewhere? Ask Richard to collect dry cleaning. Office party what to wear? Black velvet too small. Stop eating now. Fishnets lilac. Leg wax no time, shave instead. Cancel stress-busting massage. Highlights must book soonest (starting to look like mid-period George Michael). Pelvic floor squeeze! Supplies of Pill!!! Ice cake (royal icing?—chk Delia.) Cranberries. Mini party sausages. Stamps for cards Second class x40. Present for E's teacher? And, whatever you do, wean Ben off dummy before Xmas with in-laws. Chase KwikToy, useless mail order present company. Smear test NB. Wine, Gin. Vin santo. Ring Mum. Where did I put Simon Hopkinson "dry with hair dryer" duck recipe? Stuffing? Hamster???

Reading Group Guide

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“The national anthem for working mothers.” —Oprah Winfrey

The introduction, discussion questions, author biography, and suggested reading list that follow are intended to enhance your group’s reading of Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It, a hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly unforgettable novel about a working mother trying to strike that impossible balance between work and family.

1. At 1:37 a.m. on an average night, Kate Reddy has just returned from a business trip to Sweden and is banging store-bought mince pies with a rolling pin so that they’ll look homemade for her daughter’s school Christmas party. She then goes out to the trash bins to hide the pie boxes so that Paula, her nanny, won’t tell the other nannies that Kate cheated on the pies. She cleans up the kitchen and then takes a long time brushing her teeth so that her husband will fall asleep before she comes to bed (if they don’t have sex, she can skip a shower in the morning and possibly have time for Christmas shopping on the way to work). How does this sequence, along with the “Must Remember” list that follows it, work to set the comic pacing for the novel [pp. 3–10]? How successful is the opening chapter in getting the reader to sympathize with Kate and her daily challenges?

2. When Kate arrives late for work, she needs to come up with what her friend Debra calls “a Man’s Excuse” [p. 15]—something that does not have to do with sick children or an absent nanny, preferably something involving car repairs or traffic. Is Pearson accurate in describing a business world that has little patience for the out-of-office responsibilities of working mothers?

3. Kate has two good friends, Debra and Candy, with whom she exchanges comical e-mail messages. What do these messages convey about the ways women console, support, and entertain one another? What do they convey about the subculture of office life?

4. “There is an uneasy standoff between the two kinds of mother which sometimes makes it hard for us to talk to each other. I suspect that the nonworking mother looks at the working mother with envy and fear because she thinks that the working mum has got away with it, and the working mum looks back with fear and envy because she knows that she has not. In order to keep going in either role, you have to convince yourself that the alternative is bad” [p. 96]. How do Kate’s vexed interactions with local “Mother Superiors” reflect the truth of this statement?

5. Pearson has said of her book, “It’s a tragedy at the pace of comedy.” What does she mean by this? Do you agree?

6. Musing on her relationship with her unreliable father, Kate thinks, “Daughters striving to be the son their father never had, daughters excelling at school to win the attention of a man who was always looking the other way, daughters like poor mad Antigone pursuing the elusive ghost of paternal love. So why do all us Daddy’s Girls go and work in places so hostile to women? Because the only real comfort we get is from male approval” [p. 153]. Is this an adequate explanation for Kate’s ambition? How did her family’s instability and poverty shape her psyche?

7. How is the romantic distraction posed by Jack Abelhammer important in further illuminating Kate’s position? Is the outcome a forgone conclusion, or did she just make the right choice for herself?

8. “If you give Chris Bunce five million years he may realize that it’s possible to work alongside women without needing to take their clothes off” [p. 298]. Is Pearson right in suggesting that many workplaces tolerate the sexism of some male workers? How satisfying is Kate and Momo’s revenge upon Bunce?

9. Why has Pearson chosen to include the character of Jill Cooper-Clark, who dies of cancer at age forty-seven? Why is Jill’s memo to her husband (“Your Family: How It Works!”) so poignant? What has Jill’s friendship meant to Kate? How does it shift the novel’s comic events to a more serious context?

10. In an essay in a British newspaper, Pearson remarked, “Children may behave like liberals—they believe they should be allowed to do what they want—but what they really like, what makes them feel safe, is essentially conservative. . . . My ideals told me that men and women could both go out to work and be truly equal. My children told me something more complicated, something I really didn’t want to hear. Their need for me was like the need for water or light: it had a devastating simplicity to it. It didn’t fit any of the theories about what women were supposed to do with their lives, theories written in books often by women who never had children.” How does this statement resonate with the experiences detailed in the novel? Is this a novel that is too close to reality for comfort because Pearson tells us things we know but don’t want to acknowledge?

11. Which is a greater strain on Kate and Richard’s marriage—the children, Kate’s job, and her frequent travel, or her romantic interest in her American client? What does Pearson mean when she writes, “Any woman with a baby has already committed a kind of adultery” [p. 169]? How does the novel underscore the ways in which the arrival of children irrevocably changes the relationship between husband and wife?

12. A recent newspaper article noted that of Fortune magazine’s fifty most powerful women, one-third have husbands who stay at home with the children. Would Kate’s problems be solved if her husband left his failing architecture firm to become a stay-at-home father? Does the novel suggest that Kate needs to let him reassume the primary economic role if their marriage is to survive? Does Pearson suggest that people are still offended by the idea of a woman who makes more money than her husband? Why?

13. Some of the novel’s funniest moments have to do with clothing, as when, in her haste, Kate has overlooked some detail of her dress. She gives a major presentation wearing a red bra under a sheer white blouse; she pulls on black tights in the train on the way to Jill’s funeral without realizing that they have Playboy bunnies up the backs of the legs. How does Pearson use these moments to show how important details of dress are in the working world, and how wrong things can go when women don’t have butlers or wives to look after their clothing?

14. With their aggressive moral superiority, the women Kate calls “Mother Superiors” seem to believe they have made the right choice in staying home with their children. When Kate is tried at the imaginary “Court of Motherhood” (Chapters 6, 18, 40), why is she always on the defensive? Is this internalized “court of motherhood” something that plagues all mothers, not only those who work outside the home?

15. As Kate herself says, “Giving up work is like becoming a missing person. One of the domestic Disappeared. The post offices of Britain should be full of Wanted posters for women who lost themselves in their children and were never seen again”
[p. 170]. Is Kate’s decision to leave her job a disappointment or a relief?

16. The book ends with the question “What else?” at the end of another “Must Remember” list. Is Kate’s life qualitatively better since she left her job and moved away from London? With the final page, does Pearson imply that Kate’s life is essentially un-changed, or that it is about to take off in an exciting direction in which she will dictate the terms of her working life?

Interviews

Q: This is your first novel. What made you decide to write it?

A:
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 a senior partner in her firm which said: “Why does childbirth have to take so long?” The room erupted and I heard this dark, bitter laugh in my own head. It was Kate Reddy laughing. She didn't have a name back then, but I knew she had a terrific sense of humour. Soon after, I began a weekly column in the London Daily Telegraph describing Kate's adventures at work and at home. I'd like to say that I created her, but very soon she took over and wrote me,rather than me writing her!

Q: A new book about fertility and working mothers has startled American women making the cover of Time magazine this spring. (It is called, CREATING A LIFE: Professional Women and the Quest for Children by Sylvia Ann Hewlett.) Is it surprising to you that women might "miss" the chance to have children because they are so preoccupied with career-success?

A:
It doesn't surprise me at all. The mothers I interviewed when I was researching my book all said that in order to be successful in their careers, they needed to hide the fact that they had kids – one woman actually said her firm would be more forgiving if you were caught in possession of crack cocaine than children! Most of the women went to great lengths to hide the fact they had kids – never displaying photographs, never mentioning any childcare problems, always making a Man's Excuse if they were late – ie, trouble with the car or the traffic rather than a sick baby.

Because the corporate culture is hostile to mothers who are deemed to Lack Commitment, there is no good time for a young ambitious person to have a baby so she postpones it and postpones it, always thinking it might get easier later on and it never does, and then it's too late, which I think is a tragedy. One of the themes of I Don't Know How She Does It is the miraculous love that babies bring with them, how they change your heart. The idea that women have missed out on that miracle because they felt that their employers wouldn't tolerate it makes me feel incredibly sad.

Q: What do you recommend to working mothers who for financial or personal reasons want it all – to move up the corporate ladder AND have hands on care of their children?

A
: I think that many mothers who work need to work – either for personal fulfillment or just to pay all those bills! But I don't think that you can move up the corporate ladder and have hands-on care of the children – how can you? With the long hours demanded, you will be lucky if you make it home for bath – and bedtime. Most of the women I spoke to favoured some kind of flexible working where they could be home more and then work, often late into the night. I only wish that more businesses felt they could let women do that – it would be productive for all concerned. And humane too!

Q: It seems that you think that women are better at juggling or multi-tasking than men. Why do you think that is?

A:
As Kate says, “Life is a road for a man, for women it's a map.” I think we're wired differently. If you give your husband more then three things to remember, in general, the smoke will start coming out of his ears! I guess it must be something to do with Early Woman being a gatherer – needing to go out and pick berries while keeping an ear out for the children and planning what they're going to have for that Cave Party a week from Tuesday. Men hunted, women gathered: I think that's why they can cut everything out except the task in hand and we find that hard.

Q: Is it possible to have two high-powered working parents in one family?

A:
Well, we have two in our house, so it's certainly possible, although definitely not easy! There are times when you are both insanely busy and the household is pushed to snapping point. It's usually over something small, like why didn't someone else notice we were out of kitchen towel or loo paper? What you need is really good childcare. As many of us now live far from our families, we can't call on that great network of grandmas and aunts that would feel so much better than handing over your baby to a comparative stranger. I believe there comes a point when one person – it's usually the woman – has to scale back her commitments. Not being able to make a home because there's no time can feel frustrating and painful. You want to do it as well as your own Mum did!

Q: After all these years of a "women's movement," and the implementation of laws regarding sexual harassment, do you think workplaces are still sexist environments?

A:
Obviously, things are much better than they were, but Kate Reddy's world – the financial sector – has been slower to change than most. During my research, the women who were helping me on some of the guys emails that come out of these places – they were so specific they'd make a gynecologist want to go and lie down.

What I really think is that women were allowed into the workplace, but the workplace never stopped being male. The long-hours culture is male (women want to get home), the dick-swinging meetings culture is male (for men meetings are arenas of display, women want to make a quick decision and get on with their work), the politicking and oiling up to senior colleagues is male (most women don't have the stomach for it). One banker I spoke too said, “If the office was full of estrogen instead of testosterone, you'd see a huge and beneficial change.”

Q: Kate Reddy feels fiercely competitive with the stay-at-home moms who she fears judge her for not being a good enough mother. You've observed a very real tension of modern day life – this competition/anxiety that makes working moms and stay-at-home moms view each other warily. Which group judges the other more harshly do you think?

A:
I think it's very complicated. As a working mother, I often look at stay-home Mums with a mixture of envy and anxiety – are they judging me for not being with my kids full-time? Then again, I have friends who have given up work and they look with envy and anxiety at people like me who get to leave the house and wear clean clothes and even, sometimes, sleep on their own in a hotel bed for a full 12 uninterrupted hours! In the book, Kate calls the stay-at-home women the Mothers Superior and classes herself a Mother Inferior, which is how I personally feel a lot of the time. I don't think working mothers judge the stay-home mothers – they know they've made the big sacrifice to be with their kids – but I think some judging may go on the other way round.

Q: The enthusiasm for your novel has been immediate and passionate – certainly here at Knopf. Tell us about sale of the novel around the world and the sale of the movie rights.

A:
I always thought that Kate would get a following in the States – the situation for working mothers seems to be very similar to the one in Britain. But I was amazed to have the rights to the book purchased in 13 countries, including Japan and Israel. Maybe the theme of stress is pretty universal right now?

The movie rights were sold last summer. I was building sandcastles with the kids on a beach when my mobile phone rang and it was my film agent, Norman North, ringing to say that Miramax had made an offer we couldn't refuse. It was incredibly exciting, but then Thomas – he's my youngest and was then nearly two, came over and celebrated Mummy's major movie deal by depositing an ice-cream in my lap. I thought it was such a Kate moment!

Q: How did you find time to write this novel? Did it take a long time to write?

A:
Being a mother of two small children and trying to write a novel is hell – like having a secret third child in the house that you have to go and play with when the other two have gone to bed. It took me a year; the first half when I was doing my other jobs, and then four months flat out at the end. I found the time by working till 1 a.m., then getting up at 5 a.m. and putting in a couple of hours till Evie and Tom woke up. Then, I'd get them ready for the day and return to the computer. By the end Evie – she's six – was standing next to the computer saying, “Have you finished your book yet, Mum? Please have you finished your book?” The irony of a stressed-out working mother writing a novel about a stressed-out working mother was hard to bear at times. I think I lost about six months of their lives to create Kate Reddy.

My only hope is that the novel stirs up some discussion so that life will be very different for Evie and her female friends when they get to working age. The novel is dedicated to her – it's my way of saying, “This is how your mother's generation had to live and never think I didn't love you.”

Q: Everyone at Knopf (with special emphasis on the moms here) is comparing notes on "Kate Reddy moments." As the creator of the concept, could you give us some of your "personal best?"

A:
There are so many, but one disaster stands out. As a journalist, I had to go and interview Tom Hanks at the Dorchester. It was not long after my daughter was born, and when I held out my hand to shake the movie stars I realized I had this kind of epaulette of banana sick on my black jacket. When you have a baby or little kids, it's a constant battle to keep your work clothes clean, so I identify totally with all of Kate's embarrassments in this area. Luckily, Tom Hanks was so nice and had kids of his own, that he said, “Oh, don't worry, this happens all the time.” Which was incredibly sweet, but clearly untrue: not too many people go to meet him covered in regurgitated breakfast!

Some of the moments are not that funny. I went to Los Angeles for almost a week on a job and ended up sitting in a hotel while I was messed around by some very arrogant PR people. Every night, I called my husband and he told me that six-month-old Thomas was “a little under the weather.” When I finally got home, I walked into the kitchen and I realized immediately that the baby had been ill. I picked him up and he gave me such a wonderful smile– he was so happy to see me – but he had lost so much weight. It turned out, he had tonsillitis and Anthony hadn't wanted to worry me. I was so incredibly upset. I stood there and wept and all the time the baby was laughing and smiling, just delighted to have his Mummy back. I hated the fact that I'd wasted my time with those worthless vain Hollywood people when my baby boy was ill. That was the worst moment.


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