Going for the Juggler: I Don’t Know How She Does It
By Bruce Collier May 22, 2003 Issue

I Don’t Know How She Does It, British critic Allison Pearson’s debut novel, is testy, biting, at times strident, but also poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. Quotable quotes cover nearly every page. In fact, having finished the book I realized I’d read or heard a number of them already on the Internet or in conversation with female friends.

As with so many of the best novels, the pleasure of I Don’t Know How She Does It lies in its main character, narrator Katherine “Kate” Reddy. Kate is young, pretty, brilliant at her job, a loving wife, and mother of two adored children. She is one of the anointed, a woman who has and does it all. Daily confronted with the titular observation, Kate’s confidential response to the reader is, quite simply, that she doesn’t.

In her own mind, Kate is a marital and maternal fraud, a manic juggler forever and imperfectly covering her tracks. The book opens with a brilliantly funny scene: Kate at home at 1:37 a.m., carefully distressing the crusts of store-bought mince pies. Why? The pies are intended for her 5-year-old daughter’s school Christmas party, and Kate’s failure to supply the home-baked variety would bring her before the Court of Motherhood (always in session) on a charge of Cutting Corners. Kate’s judges are legion: herself, her mother-in-law, her male and female colleagues, and the “Muffia,” a many-headed vigilante corps composed of women who, for various reasons, remain at home as “proper mothers.” Having first discussed the delicate art of pie-distressing, Kate concludes:

“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.”

Kate works in London’s pressure-cooker world of financial fund management. Her immediate supervisor is Rod Task, a foul-mouthed sexist Aussie who depends on Kate far more than he would ever admit. Her departmental boss is Robin Cooper-Clark, whose urbane, sympathetic
manner and impeccable appearance is sustained by his own wife to a degree that becomes painfully obvious when she dies.

“Men need women far more than women need men,” observes Kate. The observation has a ring of truth, but Kate is far from the old stereotype of the angry, male-bashing feminist. In fact Kate needs two men badly, her husband Richard and her baby son Ben. Kate’s grueling work schedule and her splintered capacity for sustained personal relationships pose a genuine threat to her happiness. Her descent into realization grows steeper and less funny, until she is forced to make a painful cost-benefit analysis on herself and her
lifestyle, and take steps.

Kate makes a life-changing choice, but characteristically doesn’t suffer in silence. While unashamedly sticking up for motherhood and wifehood, Kate simmers and boils, ranting and lashing out at the double standards imposed on working men and women. Think the revolution came and went? It may have come, but it’s apparently still in progress, and the workplace is a
free-fire zone. If you grew up with women’s liberation and thought that equality had been achieved, or at least inequality had been banished, this book may come as a shock. Achieving equality of rights was one thing. Understanding the cultural perception of the roles of men and
women and then trying to maintain that hard-won equality is quite another.

And thereon hangs the tale of Pearson’s novel. I Don’t Know How She Does It ends happily, in a rather crowded series of events that works out most problems neatly, with the kind of justice rarely seen outside of Hollywood. Indeed, in her acknowledgments, Pearson thanks her agent for securing a movie deal. As I always pray whenever a book I’ve enjoyed is delivered over to the silver screen: “Please don’t let them screw it up too much.”

I Don’t Know How She Does It has received a great deal of attention. The back cover of the edition I read has quotes from four critics—all female. One of them observes “I don’t know a man on the planet who would get this book—or a woman who wouldn’t.” She couldn’t be more wrong. I’m a man, I’m on this planet, and I got it very well. Rarely have I ever been so roundly criticized for the sins of my gender and so thoroughly entertained at the same time. Ladies need not be told, but gentlemen, read this book. It can only bring you closer to women. And there’s no harm in that. (Top)

Alfred A. Knopf, 338 pp available at local libraries and retailers.

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