'Over the last three years, since I left the office, clutching my department store voucher and bouquet of flowers, I have had ample time to ponder, in snatched moments, why I've chosen this life. And, why in the 21st century, I am doing more or less the same things as my mother and grandmother did before me. As I learn more about myself as a mother, I've begun to want to understand them better, now that I am in their shoes.' Thus Alison Walsh ponders her escape from the 9-5 office life she juggled with mothering her three children to embrace the freelance life, which - in theory - would enable her to become the Best Mother in the World. In reality, though, she like so many of us finds herself patching life and motherhood - together as she goes along. Like her mother and her grandmother, she is, in the end, just a mother, with flaws aplenty. Clear-eyed, touching, forthright and funny, In My Mother's Shoesis her account of three generations of Irish motherhood her Nana, leading light of the Irish Countrywomen's Association, indomitable in all things except deferring to her husband; her mother, whose glamorous career as a 1960s air hostess was cut cruelly short by the simple act of getting married; and Alison herself, a modern woman whose life would not be thwarted by such lack of choice. Or would it? 'Cheerful, intelligent, funny and shockingly sensible .

Buy it. Read it. Pass it on' Judith O'Reilly, author of Wife in the North.