How Hard Can It Be?
1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by Fantasma from Carnaxide, Lisboa (distrito) Portugal on Wednesday, December 13, 2017
“Few sequels beat the original, but How Hard Can It Be? does so hands down. Kate Reddy's comeback as a pushing-50 "Returner,” re-entering the workforce after a spell on the mommy track, is zesty, razor-sharp, and hilarious. With a robust absence of self-pity, she has defined the humiliating onset of "invisibility" that coincides with the onrushing pressures of parents, teenage kids, and a marriage gone flat, all while attempting to reinstate her perilous professional worth. It’s full of such quotable casual profundity on the female condition I couldn't read it without a pencil to underline the abundance of great lines. Get ready for Kate!” —Tina Brown
Allison Pearson's brilliant debut novel, I Don't Know How She Does It, was a New York Times bestseller with four million copies sold around the world. Called "the definitive social comedy of working motherhood" (The Washington Post) and "a hysterical look―in both the laughing and crying senses of the world―at the life of Supermom" (The New York Times), I Don't Know How She Does It introduced Kate Reddy, a woman as sharp as she was funny. As Oprah Winfrey put it, Kate's story became "the national anthem for working mothers."
Seven years later, Kate Reddy is facing her 50th birthday. Her children have turned into impossible teenagers; her mother and in-laws are in precarious health; and her husband is having a midlife crisis that leaves her desperate to restart her career after years away from the workplace. Once again, Kate is scrambling to keep all the balls in the air in a juggling act that an early review from the U.K. Express hailed as "sparkling, funny, and poignant...a triumphant return for Pearson."
Will Kate reclaim her rightful place at the very hedge fund she founded, or will she strangle in her new “shaping” underwear? Will she rekindle an old flame, or will her house burn to the ground when a rowdy mob shows up for her daughter’s surprise (to her parents) Christmas party? Surely it will all work out in the end. After all, how hard can it be?
Allison Pearson's brilliant debut novel, I Don't Know How She Does It, was a New York Times bestseller with four million copies sold around the world. Called "the definitive social comedy of working motherhood" (The Washington Post) and "a hysterical look―in both the laughing and crying senses of the world―at the life of Supermom" (The New York Times), I Don't Know How She Does It introduced Kate Reddy, a woman as sharp as she was funny. As Oprah Winfrey put it, Kate's story became "the national anthem for working mothers."
Seven years later, Kate Reddy is facing her 50th birthday. Her children have turned into impossible teenagers; her mother and in-laws are in precarious health; and her husband is having a midlife crisis that leaves her desperate to restart her career after years away from the workplace. Once again, Kate is scrambling to keep all the balls in the air in a juggling act that an early review from the U.K. Express hailed as "sparkling, funny, and poignant...a triumphant return for Pearson."
Will Kate reclaim her rightful place at the very hedge fund she founded, or will she strangle in her new “shaping” underwear? Will she rekindle an old flame, or will her house burn to the ground when a rowdy mob shows up for her daughter’s surprise (to her parents) Christmas party? Surely it will all work out in the end. After all, how hard can it be?
This is clearly a case of "it's not you, it's me", as everyone gave so good reviews to this book and I struggled to finish it and only the last 150 pages maybe I found enjoyable and funny.
For the rest... if every woman has that kind of problems with menopause, it's not funny and is profoundly sad and worrying, IMO. At the extreme it was presented on the book... and there are so may pages of Kate just having such a hard time with everything.
And I don't need to have such a vivid and clear and detailed description of a period huge blood loss! In which way is anything of the situation described funny??
And did she have any support? No, because her husband couldn't care less about her, or the money needed to pay the bills, or their children... But did she say anything? No, she just tried to manage everything alone, on her own, and in the end when the expected happened - of course he was having an affair with that girl - she even forgives him and thinks he "has tried". Really!?!?!?
There are a lot of things that got on my nerves in this book and I honestly thought about giving up by middle of it as nothing was evolving and it was only a repeat of the same situations, but by the end it got a little better.
For the rest... if every woman has that kind of problems with menopause, it's not funny and is profoundly sad and worrying, IMO. At the extreme it was presented on the book... and there are so may pages of Kate just having such a hard time with everything.
And I don't need to have such a vivid and clear and detailed description of a period huge blood loss! In which way is anything of the situation described funny??
And did she have any support? No, because her husband couldn't care less about her, or the money needed to pay the bills, or their children... But did she say anything? No, she just tried to manage everything alone, on her own, and in the end when the expected happened - of course he was having an affair with that girl - she even forgives him and thinks he "has tried". Really!?!?!?
There are a lot of things that got on my nerves in this book and I honestly thought about giving up by middle of it as nothing was evolving and it was only a repeat of the same situations, but by the end it got a little better.
