RETURN OF SANDWICH
It was the book that spoke to a generation of women who were trying to have it all. Now, finally we have the sequel to I Don’t Know How She Does It and, as author Allison Pearson explains, life has not become any easier for its heroine Kate Reddy…
It’s refreshing for a heroine to age in real time, and that is exactly what Allison Pearson has done with Kate Reddy, the harassed career woman she created in I Don’t Know How She Does It.
Back then, Kate was trying to keep up the facade of being a high-flying fund manager and the perfect mum. The book was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic and led to a film starring Sarah Jessica Parker. Fast-forward 15 years and Kate returns as a midlife Sandwich Woman in How Hard Can It Be? and the juggle only seems to have got worse. Teenage children, ageing parents, a crumbling marriage, the struggles of returning to work and the horrors of the menopause may sound familiar to many. We asked Allison how her heroine can possibly get through it all.
Why did you decide to finally bring Kate back?
There was always pressure to write a sequel but I felt I had said what I wanted to say about juggling work and motherhood. It was only in the last two or three years, I thought this is a huge other thing we are seeing. You think as the kids get older, it will get easier – haha, it doesn’t! It just gets different. Then a female friend called me in tears after a meeting with a headhunter about going back to work. He said to her, ‘You’re 48, forget it, there is nothing you have done when you’ve been out of this environment that could be of any use to anybody.’ I thought this is so wrong and so unjust, she is one of the most capable people I know.
The first book ended with Kate giving up her job to concentrate on her family...
I gave the first book the wrong ending. She goes and lives in the country and raises pigs. I gave her a get-out-of-jail-free card. I had thousands of letters and emails from readers. Quite a lot of them said, oh I can’t give up. Now I think she should have stayed where she was.
How did you find writing this book?
Overwhelming. Certainly more difficult than the first one. I was thinking rather sadly the other day that the person who wrote I Don’t Know How She Does It was in her late 30s, she was full of zip and optimism, she could put the kids to bed and then sit up all night writing. I am 57 now, this is the work of an older person who is quite tired.
What makes midlife more difficult now than in the past?
By the time my grandmother was 51, she would have been quite comfortably feeling oldish – but who of us these days has seen our natural hair colour? Nobody. It has added to the pressure we put ourselves under. Often, we’ve had our children later, so we hit the perfect storm of entering menopause when we have teenagers, not children who have left home. Something is often going wrong with the grandparents, as well. My mother had me when she was 24 and my grandmother was in her mid-40s, a very different family set up. On top of that, most families have two breadwinners, so there is work, too.
First time round, Kate faced sexism in the workplace – is ageism the problem now?
Men at a certain age tend to be CEOS and women are on the scrap heap. When I was writing the book, I discovered that two friends are lying about their age. One is in a City-type job and the other is in TV. It’s not that they knock the age off, it’s that they’re not drawn on it. When one was asked about having a daughter at university, she had to do the mental arithmetic and say she had had her very young.
And Kate’s also dealing with the menopause, there’s one memorable scene when she has a heavy period during a business pitch.
I had something similar happen when I was at quite a formal dinner party. That was horrendous; I would have used anything, a carpet, a bath mat. So many women have got a story about it, it’s not unusual. I wanted to write about it with some humour but with absolute honesty, because I was thinking why on earth shouldn’t we say what happens to us, it’s not going to happen to a man, is it?
Did the response to the first book surprise you?
I thought that if I could get it right, it would connect with a lot of people, but the numbers were amazing, and then in America it was on every single bestseller list. I think that it’s about telling people certain things but saying it so they’ll laugh. Somebody said to me why don’t you write a factual book, and I said, well if you write a book called Ladies, Your Life Stinks, it would sell about 10 copies. If you write a book that says ladies your life stinks but in a funny way or make them cry, people are very grateful for that sense of shared experience.
Are you hoping this book will be made into a film, too?
It would certainly be nice! Sarah Jessica Parker has been lovely and so supportive in the past, so if she wanted to do this one, she could. I will be sending her a copy!
How is Kate different to you?
She is cleverer than I am – she can add up, I failed my maths O level. I think she’s stronger then I am. I bestow her with qualities I don’t have, she’s a combination of lots of women I love and admire.
Will we be meeting Kate again in the future?
I think it has to be a trilogy, but we’ll wait until she’s a grandmother. I’m very glad that this didn’t come straight away because it feels like there’s a lot to say. If it just followed the last book, it would have been more of the same. The book is not a manifesto, the book is to laugh people into recognition, or to make people cry and laugh, to make them share what is a meditation on women and ageing and having teenagers. Above all, it’s saying don’t write people like this off. It’s a bit of a battle cry for the older woman, I just hope people will feel the joy of it and enjoy it. NOW TURN OVER TO MEET KATE REDDY AGAIN…