WHAT DO YOU DO ALL DAY?

Considered as the American answer to Alison Pearson’s I Don't Know How She Does It, Amy Scheibe's well written and funny debut What Do You Do All Day? is surely to be a hit with women who enjoyed The Nanny Diaries, Good in Bed, or The Devil Wears Prada.

Like the gals in those books, our mommy heroine, Jennifer Bradley is alone in Manhattan dealing with her unbalanced life. Except she's not really alone. She has a husband, Thom, who's away most of the time doing the bidding of his slimy boss; a classic monster-in-law, who she wishes would disappear; and several cool friends, including a handsome gay man with an adopted daughter, and a super smart African-American just-got-laid-off-from-work mom. Parenting her two kids, including precocious daughter, Georgia who hasn't found her personal Jesus yet, proves more than she can handle when her husband leaves for a three-month business trip.

I really enjoyed this book and felt more sympathetic towards Jennifer than the women The Nanny Diaries, Good in Bed, or The Devil Wears Prada. We're about the same age, went through the punk phase, had lousy ex-boyfriends, worked, found a great husband, and stayed home with the kids. Like Jennifer, I wonder if home is where I should be or if I should go back to work. And as a mother, I can relate to Jennifer's "how badly can I mess up my kids this week" motherhood anxiety. Plus she's smart, sarcastic, and a caring mom and friend.

Scheibe gives Jennifer's character credibility having her grow up as poor trailer trash complete with an alcoholic father, and a slightly sordid "before I had kids" life. She and Thom earned their fabulously funky, and well off life in a Chelsea loft by working hard and having a few lucky breaks.

Even so, What Do You Do All Day? has a fairly tale ending since almost everything, including the job and the monster-in-law issues, work out in the end. It's a bit implausible, but that's o.k. Mothers need a few more modern day fairy tails to aspire to after a long day in the mommy trenches.