Book Club Discussion Questions
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
About This Reading Guide
The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of Allison Pearson's
I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother, a hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly unforgettable novel about a working mother trying to strike that impossible balance between work and family.
Discussion Topics
- 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. 310]? How successful is the opening chapter in getting the reader to sympathize with Kate and her daily challenges?
- 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?
- 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?
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- How does the author develop themes of identity and belonging throughout the narrative?
- What role does the setting play in shaping the characters' decisions and relationships?
- Discuss how the ending reframes the events of the story. Were you surprised?
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Anchor Books.
Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.