How Hard Can It Be?

A lot of the book club were a little disappointed with this book, they felt that it was all very surface in terms of the themes it covered. It could have gone into a lot more depth with any of the many themes such as self-harm etc. There were a lot of one liners, and we felt that there was quite a lot of whining going on. There were a lot of oddities within the writing style of the book where there were lots of full sentences and then a really weird short stilted sentence like something out of Bridget Jones. There was a certain amount of connecting with the main protagonist as a lot of the book group are of an age with her.

It's worth mentioning that this is the second book in this series, and many of the book club hadn't read the first one so we might be missing out having done this. The two members who had read book one said that we probably weren't missing out on anything in terms of character development and that this book could be read on its own.

Opinion was split over Ray the brain archivist, some found him finny while others were confused by him and didn't enjoy those interludes.

We had a long discussion about the differences between men and women, thinking that maybe a man in this situation would have delegated some of the jobs he had to do, but we were sure as it might come down to the personality of the individuals. We felt that in this case the husband was particularly selfish and got exactly what he deserved at the end of the book.

We also had a discussion around cyber security and how to keep ourselves and our children safe when they're doing things we have no idea about online.

Overall we gave this book 7 out of 10.

Thank you to Morgan Jones and Harper Collins for the opportunity to read and review How Hard Can It Be? by Allison Pearson. As a follow up to I Don't Know How She Does It, this book is an accurate and funny portrayal of a woman having a midlife menopausal crisis.
Often witty and funny, if you can identify with Kate and all that is happening in her life then you will really enjoy the book. Our book group enjoyed it.

This book is a sequel to Allison Pearson’s “I don’t know how she does it”, although I was not aware of this when I read it and had not read the first book. It features Kate, a fairly average middle-class, middle-aged woman. She has fairly typical teenage children (ie difficult), a husband who is having a mid-life crisis (started cycling and given up work to retrain), a very scary milestone birthday approaching (50, not half as bad as my impending 60), ageing parents/in-laws who are either reverting back to their childhood or behaving very badly and a crumbling house which is leaching money and means that she needs to go back to work to support the family.

It is written in a very jaunty style which relies on one-liners and constant “jolliness”. Initially I found this quite irritating and decided that it was definitely possible to have too much of a good thing. However, after a while I started to get into the swing of the writing style and just let myself go with the flow – this worked and I actually began to enjoy it, not so much despite the writing style, but because of it.

The book has an astonishing number of perceptive observations about the everyday life of a mother who is juggling a very busy life, peppered with crises. In fact there are so many discerning remarks that many of them are reduced almost to throw-away comments. I found myself identifying with lots of character traits and situations which I recognized from my own life as a 50-something.

The fact that I had not read the first book did not detract at all from my enjoyment. It works perfectly well as a stand-alone book and I would thoroughly recommend it. I intend to try and find time to read the first part of Kate’s story and will definitely look out for future installments.

On the whole we enjoyed this book, we found it very funny in places but we thought the cover didn’t do it justice. We were reading proof copies and the book is now in the shops with a different cover which should be better.
Most of us found it a quick, easy read, which made us laugh and we appreciated her “archivist” Roy and could empathise with that need.
However our male reader felt the male characters in the book were clichéd and not well portrayed or realistic but he felt the book portrayed the peer pressures on teenage girls very accurately.
One reader made particular mention of Kate always complaining of being hard up but she can afford to pay a permanent builder, liposuction in her lunch hour and see a Harley Street gynaecologist!
A few of us did not enjoy it and did not finish it, one saying she found it too reminiscent of the Adrien Mole Diaries. Another had three attempts to engage with the book but just couldn’t “click” with it, even after reading a magazine article of an interview with the author which encouraged her to try again.
We would give it a 4* review.