Meet Kate Reddy, fund manager and mother of two. A victim of time famine, Kate counts seconds like other women count calories. Factor in a manipulative nanny, an Australian boss who looks at Kate`s breasts as if they`re on special offer, a long-suffering husband, her quietly aghast in-laws, two needy children and an e-mail lover, and you have a woman juggling so many balls that some day soon something`s going to hit the ground. In an uproariously funny and achingly sad novel, Allison Pearson brilliantly dramatises the dilemma of working motherhood at the start of the twenty-first century.