Allison Pearson: I Don't Know How She Does It

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

Move over Bridget Jones - here's a fictional archetype for the next stage of women's existence: Kate Reddy, high-flying investment banker, mother of two, wife, friend, sister, daughter - and the kind of woman who sticks her own labels on to bought jars of jam so that the Perfect Mothers won't look down their noses.

This delightful social comedy is a book for our time - if you also happen to be a multiple role-player labouring under the tyrannical constraint of 24 hours a day.

The fact that so many of us are in this category is reflected in the interest (and sales) this book has already stimulated in its British home market, and the United States, where the author cunningly placed some of the book's action, and where a recent appearance on Oprah has sent the publisher rushing back to the printer.

Pearson, a mother of two and award-winning journalist, first created the Kate Reddy character for a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph, in which she shared with her readers her feeling that pursuing her career made her feel an inadequate mother. Response: overwhelming.

Kate's dilemma, while of course exaggerated for the purposes of a good story, is crushingly familiar: the "time famine", the endless list of "musts" that runs tirelessly through her head, ranging chaotically from nappies to smear tests to bills to "adjust the work-life balance for healthier, happier existence" and "sex?".

Kate's situation is particularly tricky as her job is in London's City, a virtual no-women culture, where it is more acceptable to be late due to vehicle-breakdown than because your child was up all night, and where her boss describes 5.30pm as "lunchtime".

She is married to "Slow Richard" an "ethical architect" with "acres of English reasonableness". Just as well, but even he has almost had enough, although Kate doesn't recognise the signs.

The two children - Emily, 5, and Benjamin, 1 - hate Kate being gone so much, and have failed to grasp the principle of "quality time". Their nanny knows more about them than Kate does, and she tells her mother-in-law that Emily loves broccoli, when in fact she hasn't a clue if it's true.

What is Kate to do? Into the mayhem comes the exciting American investor Jack Abelhammer with his steamy, enticing emails. What direction will Kate jump?

This is a novel of extremes - the ideal of "having it all" versus the dreadful reality - "Perfect Mothers" at home bored but obsessed with their children's social progress - and from very early on one wonders how on Earth Pearson will resolve it all. No lily pad looks a good place to land.

For relaxation (at 1.30am in a hot bath while, hopefully, Richard is giving up on the idea of sex and falling asleep) Kate reads Country Property Guide. Surely not?

Go part-time? But Kate's early assertion that "money doesn't know what sex you are" looks a bit weak beside the reality of "what happens when a woman tries to go part-time ... They say she's having her days off. And then they cut her out of the loop. And then they take her funds away from her, one by one, because everyone knows that managing money's a full-time job."

In the end, Pearson resolves it rather too apple-pie perfectly, too conservatively, for my liking, but there's a twist, rather in the manner of the monster that everyone thinks is dead, rearing up through the mists just before the credits roll.

While the Bridget Jones analogy is inevitable, and the first couple of chapters are almost a copy-cat for Helen Fielding's style, once Pearson settles down into a voice that's less relentlessly witty, the book gets good - more endearing, still gently funny but sometimes achingly sad and often wise. Very engaging - read it in the bath.

Chatto & Windus $34.95