Penn State Deluge - Vol. 2 No. 1 - Spring 2004

I Don't Know How She Does It may be written by a British author, Allison Pearson, but the e-mail exchanges within the novel exist as a distinct part of the global—and usually English-speaking—world of finance and business. The electronic messages contained in the 2002 novel make up a modest but valuable portion of the book. Readers see verbatim e-mails to and from three of Kate Reddy's favorite correspondents: two are fellow London-based female friends with similarly hectic jobs outside the home and one is her client-cum-suitor in New York. This balance shows the increasing breadth of e-mail use, applicable equally for communication across the office or across the ocean.

Some reviews in the popular press have offered passing critiques of Pearson's use of e-mail. [8] Most of them recognize the inclusion of such messages as a nod to present-day realism, aimed at appealing to the authenticity of her frantic life as wife, mother, and hedge-fund manager. But at least one review recognizes the telling use of fragmented language within her e-mail narratives. Kate Betts, writing in The New York Times, heralds the novel as a "sharply observed, sometimes painfully sad story." Betts joins several other reviewers in citing Kate Reddy as the heir apparent to her literary predecessor, Bridget Jones, the British diary-keeping singleton of Helen Fielding's fiction. But Betts argues that Pearson delves deeper than Fielding does and more accurately evokes the "postmodern [. . .] fragmentation and mania of multitasking, some of feminism's unintended fruits." Betts claims that Pearson's heroine is different from unmarried protagonists such as Bridget, because Kate inhabits spheres of her own choosing. Expanding on Betts' argument, we can see how Kate uses one of the vernaculars of e-mail as a means of both critiquing and acquiescing to the frenetic lifestyle she has chosen and feels obligated to perpetuate.

The electronic messages in Pearson's novel have been stripped down to the most important elements: the author, the intended recipient, and the text. This choice contrasts with other works' insistence on including the imagined e-mail addresses, subject lines, and dispatch times. Because they are inserted within the lengthier traditional prose, the messages of Kate's e-mail have no need to be pinpointed to particular times and dates. Instead, they coincide with Kate's first-person narration, depending on when she sends them or reads them. However, the traditional prose beyond the e-mail messages fluctuates between two modes: chunks of text identified by times—such as "8:01 A.M. Got to dash. Major presentation to EMF directors today." (Pearson 107)—and the remainder of the novel, during which Kate muses on quotidian events, recounts past stories, or narrates without respect to a particular time or place. [9]

The manner in which Kate and her correspondents type their e-mail messages typically tends toward a clipped, sarcastic style. In a morning message to her female friend Candy Stratton, Kate writes:

Terrific start to the day. Smear test. Like having sex with the Tin Man.
[. . .] Got in here sixteen minutes late and Guy is at my desk telling everyone he's Almost Certain that Kate will be in At Some Point. Felt like Mummy Bear and wanted to growl, Who's been sitting in my chair? Said nothing. (Pearson 69-70)

In her response, printed immediately following Kate's letter, Candy writes: "Dear Desdemona, U shd watch Guy 'Iago' Chase. Don't drop that handkerchief, honey. He wants yr job so badly his gums ache" (Pearson 70).

This e-mail exchange is studded with breezy references to The Wizard of Oz, the fairytale of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," and Othello. Such discourse makes the women's daily struggles seem slightly more mythic than they are. The messages allude to a tale about journeying to a distant, imagined goal as well as stories about having domestic and military (i.e., corporate) power usurped.

The electronic banter reveals their need for an intimate moment of wit and release amid workplace stress, coupled with the assumed brevity of that moment. The practice of dropping personal pronouns and articles infiltrates Kate's written voice even beyond the computer-bound world, often seen in the time-stamped passages of the novel and the "Must Remember" entries that conclude many chapters and days in Kate's life. The narration shifts back and forth, usually without warning, between the abruptness of her "e-mail voice" and the more straightforward authorial address.

Whether talking and typing with an underlying hurried imperative actually saves any time for Kate and female colleagues seems to be beside the point for them. One of the reasons they use e-mail is the chance to feel connected even when many other physical distractions take up their time. Moving into the same clipped mode of expression is a way of alternately satirizing and accepting the assumed no-time-to-talk pace necessary to be a successful businesswoman and a caring mother at once.

Kate casts aspersion on the myriad minutiae that distract her from having meaningful moments with people by typing her e-mail messages in such a brisk tenor. But at the same time, a hint of adrenaline runs through the insistence of using this "e-mail voice." As much as Kate complains about it, the fast-paced world of international investment banking exhilarates her and forces her to challenge and marginalize the other drives that define her life—most poignantly, motherhood and affection for her husband. Even after she quits her job in the City and moves out to the country, hoping to reconfirm and cement relationships with her children and her spouse, she can shake neither the voice she used in her e-mails at work nor her breezy narrative.

The novel concludes with a laundry list of statements, contained in first-person narration, which echo the way Kate used to type her (by-now-clichéd) note-to-self entries. Kate mutters to herself: "Chicken out of freezer. Chicken out of PTA meeting. Emily wants horse. Over my dead body; who will end up cleaning out the stable? Rich's birthday—surprise dinner? Bread. Milk. Honey" (Pearson 338). The mythic aspirations return, with allusions to the Pagan myth of Herculean labor as well as the assumed trimmings of a promised land. For some people, living comfortably in the English countryside might be a paradise, a dream come true. But even as a stay-at-home mom, Kate cannot resist the drive of frenzied multitasking, embodied in the way she communicates over the internet. Pearson has made this mode of electronic expression such an integral part of Kate Reddy's life that it has grown to be an important if ambiguous idiom for her to understand herself and her place in the world.

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[ Contents | Abstract | Intro | I | II | III | IV | V | VI ]
[ Notes | Works Cited | Appendix ]

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