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Kate Reddy is in a rush. She starts the day in
a rush, with her heart palpitating wildly as the cab fails to arrive
and she realises that, yet again, she does not have time to play
with Emily and Ben before she runs off to save her account and keep
her clients happy. She has tried to convince her boss that she is
not an "emergency geisha" to be sent across the Atlantic
Ocean every time one of their clients panics but, well, she is a
woman, one of a very few at Edward Morgan Foster and she is good
at her job.
Emily is not so convinced. Aged five, she knows exactly how to play
her already guilt ridden mother.
"Actually, Paula reads me that story", she withers, when
her Mum finally finds five minutes to sit still.
Paula is the nanny, who keeps the family running whilst Kate attempts
to keep the clients afloat.
And then there is Richard, long suffering husband with a struggling
architecture practice who is always home earlier than Kate and can
still never quite understand why his wife feels the need to 'distress'
the Safeway mincepies with a rolling pin so that they look home
baked. Kate can - she still remember the withering look her mother
exchanged with Mrs Davies back in 1974 when some poor child deigned
to walk up to the harvest display with a tin of peaches rather than
homebaked bread. Mothers have standards, even if they ought to be
too hardpressed to meet them.
This is a novel about success, and its heart breaking consequences.
We might laugh as Kate Reddy runs from home to office, trying to
disengage her brain from whichever of the two she is not at during
that moment. And never, ever, finding time for herself. But if we
are honest, there is a little of Kate in all of us. Are we really
sure what makes us as a person? As the economic climate turns ever
more unstable are we really sure that working harder and longer
will provide for our family in the future? Are we actually around
now to see that family grow up, or will we turn around when they
are 18 and realise we don't really know our children?
God gets a mention or too, as Emily tries to work out the meaning
of life. Children often have something to teach us, for life seems
so much more simple to them.
"I wish the weekends were were weeks," Emily announces
one day, "because then you could be with us longer"
Perhaps we all ought to stop and think through that line. What it
is that really makes us tick? Why do we really go to work? Is it
to pay the mortgage or is it really to keep us busy, so that we
don't have to think about why we are here?
This is an enchanting, heart-breaking and hysterical book that ought
to make each of us think carefully about the way we balance our
lives.
I don't know how she does it, by Allison Pearson
Chatto and Windus; ISBN: 0701173025
Claire Shelley is news editor at the Church of England
Newspaper and managing editor of CounterCulture.
email: claireshelley76@hotmail.com
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