to be really irritated with the film "I don't know how she does it" even before I've seen it?

[headfairy]

I've never read the book either. I'm judging purely on things I've read elsewhere which is of course utterly right and proper :o

AIBU to want to run screaming from the room when ever I see the trailer. I mean. What's the big deal? She works. She has children. Er... yeah. So do millions of others every single day without making a fuss. Get over yourself love.

[HerdOfTinyElephants]

The film has Sarah Jessica Parker in it, so YA automatically NBU.

(I haven't read the book, because Allison Pearson's columns have always irritated the HELL out of me and hence (a) I anticipated that her book might too and (b) I didn't want to put the royalties her way. So I can't comment on film vs. book)

[limitedperiodonly]

This drivel first popped up in the Telegraph as a weekly column. As luck would have it Kate Reddy went on a business trip to New York, loaded with guilt and posset on her shoulder, the week before 9/11.

I was astounded to read it the week later. Pearson had not only written the attack into her fictional story but had given Reddy a meeting in the Twin Towers which she missed by chance. Reddy spent the rest of the column frantically trying to phone her family and then having a tearful chat with them.

Absolutely fucking grotesque. Pearson and the Telegraph executive who let it run ought to be ashamed of themselves.

I guess that episode hasn't made it into the film. Might have pissed off the Americans, mightn't it?

Pearson decamped from the Mail back to the Telegraph last year. She continues to write smug bollocks about being a working mummy.

[rookiemater]

Kate Reddy not Helen Reddy... of couse... slaps forehead.. obviously not as big a fan as I thought... I'm thinking Kate Winslet might have been good, slightly too good looking but she has dowdied down for other roles and is at least English.

The AP in the Daily Mail columns bears no ressemblence to the one who wrote this book, no wonder she ended up suffering from depression having to trot out columns so far removed from her natural beliefs as to appear to be written by a completely different person.

[BalloonSlayer]

I hate hate HATE British things being Americanised.

< crosses arms stroppily >

So I won't be going to see it. Actually I won't be going to see it because a) I am not paying a babysitter so we can go out and watch a screen when that's all we do when we stay in and b) DH would rather crawl up a rhinoceros's arse than watch a chick-flick.

[Malcontentinthemiddle]

YANBU. Allison Pearson is a twat, the book is wrong on so many levels, and why on earth set it in the US?

Unsurprisingly, the Telegraph give it four stars. The Times on the other hand lead with 'Having It All? Oh do shut up - this dire film will make both working and stay-at-home mums feel louse'

[mollycuddles]

Read the book. Had a few well observed things but shaky plot and became increasingly annoying as it went on. Won't be going to see the film.

[TakeThisOneHereForAStart]

Just the trailer annoys me "it's 3am, time to write the list..."

I may be BU in that I don't actually mind SJP, but I still think the film looks like utter tosh.

Tosh. There's a word I never use. Somehow it just seemed to fit the occasion.

[CaptainNancy]

'feel louse' - are you sure that wasn't the Grauniad's review?

[sandyballs]

I don't get why a British book by a British writer ends up as an American film with American actors. It won't work set in America, it'll be nothing like the book.

[JillySnooper]

It's in the same shitcamp as the overhyped and not very good at all One Day.

God, I wish someone would write some really decent stuff and that the US wouldn't turn shit books into even shitter films with shit actresses.

SJP - boak. Too old and too shit.

[Bettymum]

I too hate it when they set British books in the US - High Fidelity for example.
Wrong wrong wrong (although I do quite like old wassisface Cusack normally).
Malcontent

[Fleecy]

I don't like the 'if it were easy, men would do it' or whatever the tagline is.

[Malcontentinthemiddle]

Nope, the Grauniad says: 'Nothing is really at stake in this glossy slice of chick-lit', and (I like this!):

'It is a salute to the oppressed middle classes, guaranteed to strike a chord with every harried working mum who's found herself lumbered with a full-time nanny, oodles of cash, a four-storey Boston townhouse and a supportive husband with flexible working hours'.

[101handbags]

Popbiscuit My feelings exactly. I have almost finished the book. Not seen the film yet. The book is set in London 10 years ago. Maternity leave was not as generous, flexible working/job shares/part-time work were not so common. The book is of its time. They should have left it set in the mid-90s in London. It is in no way a tirade against working mothers, it is the exact opposite. I can imagine many women at that time with a job such as Kate Reddy's could identify with some part of the book. Allison Pearson makes it clear that much of it is drawn from real life (if not hers, then other women who were in the same position).

[MrsSBrown]

Jillysnooper - absolutely, could agree more. What WAS it about One Day that was supposed to be so great. Beats me. However, for a long time, if you bought any book in Waterstones, you got it half price, which might have something to do with the sales figures.

High Fidelity, on the other hand, was a great adaptation, including a brilliant performance by Jack Black, before it all went wrong for him.

[MrsSBrown]

or rather I couldn't agree more

[CalamityKate]

I really don't get all the fuss about SJP.

IMO, she's an average actress and she isn't beautiful at all. In fact I've always thought she looks exactly like Jar Jar Binks.

[catgirl1976]

I didn't mind the book tbh - harmless chick-lit. I imagine the film will be terrible as it stars SJP, has been moved to the US and I understand the ending has been changed totally

[phedre]

I quite liked the book when I read it many years ago. I was working fulltime with a small child with very little support surrounded by SAHM so it resonated. I have never read the daily mail as I live in Australia so the fact she once wrote for it is neither here nor there for me.

But there is no farking way I will watch as I loathe SJP. A bit of shame really, it might have been good.

[JillySnooper]

The sad thing is that there could be a film there that really looked at how women juggle but that has been lost by casting a shit actress and sticking her in Wealthyville.

Wealthy working women are a breed apart.

[MrsSBrown]

yes - 'poor me I've got shedloads of money, and lovely house, and a nanny to look after my children, and I've still kept my figure and have a nice husband, how am I going to cope' get a grip.

[JillySnooper]

It's just so bloody insulting.

[sistersootica]

YANBU. I saw the poster advertising it on the side of a bus yesterday and muttered something under my breath like 'well that looks like a pile of patronising shite'....

[InMyPrime]

Aha, so that explains this awful Daily Mail article. My MIL was visiting yesterday and left her copy of the DM here so my eyes were inevitably drawn to this article, espousing the virtues of downsizing to meet family resonsibiliies and enjoying being a wife and mother, blah, blah, blah. I don't know why I do it as I'm 37 weeks pregnant and should be watching my blood pressure but anyway it all makes sense now that this film is coming out. Any excuse to pile the guilt onto working mothers.

Another gem was an article by one of their Femail columnists bemoaning her terrible decision not to marry the father of her children as he was leaving her now. 'Marriage is so much more than a piece of paper' was the tagline or something. Yawn...