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The Ten-Year Nap | 
| Author: Meg Wolitzer
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $9.99
You Save: $14.96 (60%)
New (46) Used (19) from $9.99
Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 2985
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 1594489785
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781594489785
ASIN: 1594489785
Publication Date: March 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Clean pages and Tight binding. Dust cover has light abrasions/shelf wear. Front lower edge next to spine on dust cover has 1/2 inch tear. Edges of dust cover has some wear/creasing. Corners light wear.(A-57)
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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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| Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
 Good book, but just started it August 8, 2008
ljs (Brooklyn, NY United States)
I heard about this and got it at library, and had to return it (many holds)before I got too far. I figured it was worth buying. Very well written and interesting. I am 5 years into my 10 year nap, so haven't gotten all that much further. I do enjoy the writing of a smart ny mom and her experiences, her mother who had a career late in life, etc.
 Nice writing, depressing take on things August 6, 2008
A. Turek
I thought the book was well-written.
It won't leave you satisfied in the end, but maybe that's the point. Wolitzer paints a very bleak view of what the world is like for women today. In her story, working moms and stay-at-home moms alike are bored and unhappy. No one wants what they have, and when they finally do get what they want, they don't like it.
I didn't like any of the characters. They all seemed selfish and obscure. They also all seem detached from their children in frightening ways. I didn't really understand what made any of them tick; they seemed personality-less. Maybe they were supposed to be that way, again, because of the whole "nap" theory. Like they are lost.
I didn't think there was anything particularly fascinating about Penny Ramsey, but again, maybe that was on purpose. Wolitzer is trying to tell us that we are looking for a woman who has it all, and we want to idolize her, but she just doesn't exist.
The most disturbing part of this novel was the male characters. They are all obtuse, unloving creatures who display no type of leadership in their family, and do not emotionally support thier wives. They are weak and babyish, and the women look at them with disdain. There is no sense of cohesiveness in the families.
Ultimately, I thought this book was sad because it's very isolating. These women basically live inside their heads. All their relationships are shallow, even those with their own families. They sort of drift through life, just as you sort of drift through this book, until you reach the end and it just seems to stop, in a different, albeit equally pathetic place. There is no resolution. It's not satisfying.
 Enjoyed the book; hated the characters August 4, 2008
M. Leader
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I easily finished the book in one weekend because I think Wolitzer is a fine writer who knows how to spin a story. However, my dislike for these characters prevents me from recommending it. I might be able to tolerate 350 pages of whining if the characters actually had something to whine about, but that's not the case here.
For example, Roberta stays at home in a rent-free apartment while her kids are in school and her good-natured husband works two jobs. In the meantime, she's grumbling about the male-artist hierarchy that has apparently ruined her life .... Huh?? If you ask me, all of these characters need a good swift kick in the pants. Or some real problems.
Another odd aspect of this book is how little the children actually factor into the story. None of these self-absorbed moms seem to have meaningful relationships with their children, who are hardly described at all. I kept hoping Nadia, the little girl from Romania, would be adopted by a family that actually cared about her.
This book provided a few good insights and interesting plot twists. But in the end, it painted an unrealistic picture of life for a stay-at-home mom---filled with seething discontent, oppression, frustration, boredom and lost promise ... Depressing.
 Beautiful Eloquent Novel July 24, 2008
Heather P (New York, NY)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Meg Wolitzer does an amazing job of creating interesting multi dimensional characters. I was so engrossed in the lives of the women. This is a beautiful character study of moms and the choices they have to make and how that effects everything. The varying viewpoints and flashbacks enrich this already dynamic story. I recommend it to every mom.
What about men? July 16, 2008
Robin Levinson (Hamilton, NJ)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
At the height of the feminist movement, I always said: Women will never attain equal rights until men assume equal responsibility for raising the children. Unfortunately, this time has not come, and women like the characters in 10-year-nap represent the end result. Why do we always have to do the sacrificing, the juggling, while men can focus on their career and still be dads and have it all? When will they wake up from their nap? When we wake them up, that's when, and demand true equality. I hope Wolitzer's next novel takes a deep look at this issue.
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