by Meg Wolitzer
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Product Description
From the bestselling author of The Wife and The Position, a feverishly smart novel about female ambition, money, class, motherhood, and marriage-and what happens in one community when a group of educated women chooses not to work.
For a group of four New York friends, the past decade has been largely defined by marriage and motherhood. Educated and reared to believe that they would conquer the world, they then left jobs as corporate lawyers, investment bankers, and film scouts to stay home with their babies. What was meant to be a temporary leave of absence has lasted a decade. Now, at age forty, with the halcyon days of young motherhood behind them and without professions to define them, Amy, Jill, Roberta, and Karen face a life that is not what they were brought up to expect but seems to be the one they have chosen.
But when Amy gets to know a charismatic and successful working mother of three who appears to have fulfilled the classic women's dream of having it all-work, love, family-without having to give anything up, a lifetime's worth of concerns, both practical and existential, opens up. As Amy's obsession with this woman's bustling life grows, it forces the four friends to confront the choices they've made in opting out of their careers-until a series of startling events shatters the peace and, for some of them, changes the landscape entirely.
Written in Meg Wolitzer's inimitable, glittering style, The Ten-Year Nap is wickedly observant, knowing, provocative, surprising, and always entertaining, as it explores the lives of these women with candor, wit, and generosity.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Bo-ring, 2008-07-04
I too expected and wanted to love this book but found it unbearably dull. It's the book I would have written if I were a writer. That's why I'm a lawyer.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Fascinating..., 2008-07-04
It's not often for a novel to surprise me as pleasantly as The Ten Year Nap. I was interested in reading it because of the subject matter, stay-at-home mothers. A lifestyle choice so near and dear to my heart.
The story follows a handful of educated mothers living in the NYC and surrounding areas. Some of them are at-home mothers and one of them is a working mother. The story focuses on the trials and tribulations of their relationships with one another, as well as the many people who fill out their lives--their children (duh, of course), their husbands, their parents, and, ooh, their extramarital lovers (gasp!).
The various dynamics are each treated with such individualized attention, it's impressive that Wolitzer was able to fit it all into this relatively short book. She also captures so many feelings that mothers experience - some I am familiar with, others I am not yet ready for, like when my son is too old to sit on my lap ;(
The Ten Year Nap may very well upset you. It may piss you off. It may make you roll your eyes. But when you are done with your gut reaction, ask yourself why it made you feel that way. This book removed me from my comfort zone a number of times because it forced me to recognize that some truths are ugly. You could toss off a few snide remarks that this book deals with stereotypes, but if you dig a little deeper, you'll see that Wolitzer has fleshed out her characters with raw emotional needs, tender backstories and interesting personality quirks--in short, she has made them real people. And I always have room to read books about real people.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Worst book I've read in a long time, 2008-07-02
I had such high hopes for this book given the reviews and the description. In my opinion, it fell flat. I couldn't have cared less about the characters and their journey. I think it's a poor representation of "stay at home moms" (I dislike that term because it's a bit degrading). These are the type of women where I would say "If you don't like your situtation, then do something about it". I can't stand people who complain all the time and don't do anything about it.
I will probably not read another book by Meg Wolitzer.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Take a Nap Instead of Reading this Book, 2008-07-01
This book had so many different story lines it was hard to keep up. Some of them were very interesting but then the story would switch to another character/story line that was painfully boring. It is a nice story of motherhood and I can see how some people would find this enjoyable. I found it daunting to get through and didn't relate to many of the characters.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Fascinating premise but not a fascinating read, 2008-06-23
I really wanted to like this book--in fact, I suggested it for my book club, a group of eight moms with small kids, some of us working, some of us not. For some reason, though, I couldn't relate to the characters--and if anyone should relate to women considering going back to the working world after a long hiatus, it would be me (someone who just went through, well, exactly what Amy Lamb went through.) But I found Amy's "crush" irritating--perhaps because I didn't get what was so appealing about Penny--found Jill to be cold, and was very, very annoyed that Roberta and Karen were so stereotypically ethnic. (The big nose on the Jewish woman; the math whiz Asian with an overbearing, straight out of the Joy Luck Club mom.) So it wasn't a hit with me. I also didn't find the "shocking event" to be particularly believable--or to care much about it, given my apathy for the characters.
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