Books : The Ten-Year Nap

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781594489785
ISBN: 1594489785
Label: Riverhead Hardcover
Manufacturer: Riverhead Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 351
Publication Date: March 27, 2008
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Studio: Riverhead Hardcover
Sales Rank: 4362

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Editorial Review:

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.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- A Slog of a Read
I'm not a privileged, accomplished 40 something woman who gave up my career to be a full time mother, so I just didn't get it. I agree with other reviewers that there's a whole lot of whining, and not much happens save for an affair by a secondary character. Yes, you get the kids off to school, you go for coffee with friends and waste a morning. I'll bet a lot of women wouldn't mind spending their days like that. Life happens. Get over it. I wish I could say the writing was stellar, but it ... Read More

Rating:

- Profound look at the state of affairs for women and men today
I'm sorry to see this gem of a book is not getting better reviews. As a women in her 50s, I was interested in it only because I heard that the protagonists' mothers, who were the original 2nd wave feminists of the 60s and 70s (my generation), would also be represented. However, in reading about the 30-somethings, I was instantly transported back to the days of raising my son and all the dilemmas facing women who were caught between wanting careers and wanting to be mothers at the same time. Wolitzer ... Read More

Rating:

- A difficult book to read...
I also heard about this book on NPR and picked it up the next day. Being a stay at home mom to four children who are all in school I was hoping to get inspiration on how to approach this next stage in my life. However, I must say it did not come from this book.

The book proved difficult to read due to many different character introductions and then flashbacks to that characters parents whose stories did not help me to understand the main characters more.

The middle of the book ... Read More

Rating:

- Thank-you.
After the seemingly endless train of poorly edited novels I've had to endure this year, *finally* one that admittedly, i can only guess has been diligently worked on post-author, to bring to market a book as cogent as should be expected by *any* published title. Kudos to Sarah McGrath.

'Ten Year Nap' is a well-crafted meditation on the question 'What happens when smart, educated women temporarily leave the work force for motherhood...and somehow don't find their way back?' Granted, there is ... Read More

Rating:

- Well intentioned but needs a plot
I've listened to 6 of the CDs in this audiobook version of The Ten-Year Nap, and I'm giving up. The writing is fine, and the question the author is asking--WTF are these educated, upper-middle class urbanites doing with their lives?--is pertinent. But the story has no forward motion because, well, there is no story. She goes from one less-than-interesting character to the next (one seems hardly different from the others, so I had trouble keeping them straight), spinning out lots of details about their kids, ... Read More

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