As her story unfolds, it grows more poignant. She hides in the bathroom early one morning to avoid her baby son’s seeing her about to leave for the airport. Her marriage is teetering and she has a dangerous crush on an American client with a George Clooney smile. A friend is dying. But we never doubt how much she loves her children–or the price she’s paid as a brainy woman who’s climbed from a lower-class background to the top of the glass towers of power. Pearson has an effortlessly smart style–she’s not trying to buy our sympathy for her heroine or prompt a cheap laugh. I don’t know a man on the planet who would get this book–or a woman who wouldn’t.
