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| The Ten-Year Nap | 
 enlarge | Author: Meg Wolitzer
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $8.67
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Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 1775
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 351
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
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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 51 more reviews...
 Meg Wolitzer really "gets it" March 31, 2008
56 out of 64 found this review helpful
It's been a while since I've reviewed anything on Amazon but I just wanted to say how much I loved this book. I devoured it in a weekend and found myself stopping my husband in whatever he was doing to read him random bits and snippets, mostly because Meg Wolitzer so perfectly summed up so many of the sentiments I myself had felt during the years I stayed home with my kids.
For example, there's a passage near the beginning where one of the characters talks about picking up a newspaper like the New YOrk Times and reading yet another profile of a high-powered women who "does it all." And Meg Wolitzer writes (I'm paraphrasing) that 'she wished there was something like an asterisk at the end of the article which referred you to a box at the bottom of the page which explained the backstory, what the real deal was.' And that's EXACTLY how I felt the whole time I was trying to juggle life in the foreign service with raising little kids and being pregnant. Everytime I caught a glimmer of someone who somehow or other effortlessly did it all, you'd start to talk to them and they'd say something like "Well, actually it was easy. You see, my mother had recently retired and she was widowed so she moved to Botswana for eight years and watched my kids for me while I climbed up through the ranks to become Ambassador" or "Well, actually they're my stepchildren. My husband is actually forty years older than I am, so by the time I became a "mom", the kids had already graduated from college" or something.
There are just these little MOMENTS throughout the book where I found myself exclaiming "yes, yes. she really understands. I'm not alone. I'm not crazy." Another example -- she describes the insecure mom picking up the child at school and the child is in first grade and the mom finds herself checking out all the books the other kids are reading, trying to figure out if her child is where she should be in her reading. It's like we all do these things but never admit them, and then Meg Wolitzer comes along and writes this book -- and you realize it's not just you.
I really hope this book gets people talking -- especially the dialogue between the main character and her earnest Canadian feminist mother who can't understand how the women's movement could have ended up at this point. This is just a great book!
brilliant, timely, funny -- she just nails it March 27, 2008
40 out of 45 found this review helpful
I bought this book yesterday after hearing the author on NPR with Terry Gross and seeing the profile of her in the New York Times and was up most of the night (and half of the morning) finishing this unbelievably good novel up, though i was a little teed off my bookstore didn't have the book until yesterday (publishers, what is the matter with you?). Wolitzer has everything you want in a writer -- it's like having a conversation with an unbelievably perceptive, wickedly amusing, but also on the inside serious person. And this novel takes a hard and entirely convincing look at the issues and the dilemmas facing women today. should they work or not work? is a woman's role to take care of her kids and can you "have it all" and if you do, does that mean something has to be sacrificed (your marriage, your relationship with your kids, your work?). i have never seen a book tackle something like this before in such a believable way (and i'm a guy, so this isn't really a topic that should interest me much, but I see it in my wife and in just about every woman i know and work with). so all in all she (wolitzer) has managed to carry off something pretty impossible in my opinion -- a page turner that's also a wonderful, beautifully written read. how often can you say that about a book? 5 stars all the way.
 Provides perceptive insights into motherhood March 27, 2008
34 out of 40 found this review helpful
I had heard good things about this latest offering by Meg Wolitzer, and the subject matter is something close to my heart. After reading it, I must say it's been an engaging and perceptive read.
I used to teach school for 8 years before getting married and starting a family, and then opted to stay home to raise my daughter [for the past three years], but as she grows and develops, I too am beginning to wonder " What now for me?". Don't get me wrong - I am content and happy to stay home with my child, but I am also thinking of my future and how I can potentially balance motherhood with my other passions, like teaching etc. Having come from generations of women who opted to be stay-at-home moms, and having seen the fruits of their labors, it has been a difficult decision for me to make. Meg Wolitzer's book, though a work of fiction, encapsulates the struggles that many mothers go through as they grapple with that difficult, potentially life-altering decision - give up one's career [for a while or perhaps longer] or continue working [and how does one juggle the many responsibilities that entails?].
The four main characters - Amy, Karen, Jill and Roberta, look forward to their daily meet-up at a cafe, The Golden Horn and share the joys and tribulations of life, family and especially motherhood. These are women who had successful careers before giving their careers up to fulfill the demands of motherhood. Ten years have passed and as their children develop a level of independence, they begin to take stock of their situation.
Their journey is an interesting one, and makes for an involving read - it will appeal to those who have been in a similar situation, and for those who just want some perspective on motherhood and the many challenges that entails. In Meg Wolitzer's capable hands, we are able to not just enjoy the stories of the four protagonists, but also to define the meaning of motherhood, the choices it places before us, and how those choices affect our lives.
 I liked it but... April 6, 2008
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
...there sure was an awful lot of whining going on. I wasn't particularly "taken" by most of the characters, self-involved women (and some men), living mainly on New York City's Upper East and West Sides. The main character, Amy, had a lawyer-husband and a 10 year old son. She had stopped working as a lawyer when her son was born and seemed to miss working, but not enough to stop whining about it and go back to work. Her mother was a proto-feminist, based in Toronto. Other characters, mothers of sons who attended an elite day school, drifted through the story.
Amy's closest friend from college - the daughter of a suicide - had left Manhattan for a leafy suburb in either New Jersey or New York, with her husband and adopted daughter from Russia. The daughter was not quite "with-it" and the mother felt little emotional connection with the child.
I kept waiting for the parents to have an "aha" moment and take the kid to be tested. Nope, didn't happen til the end.
Other friends had other "issues". I basically wanted to slap them all and say "quit whining and do something".
I would advise not investing a great deal of time or money in this book. If you haven't already bought it, wait til it's out in trade paper or borrow it from the library.
Not What You'd Imagine April 18, 2008
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
The write up for this book is much better than the book itself. You'd think you'd be able to find something interesting about at least one of the multiple characters in this book. Guess again. I found the "concept" of the book to be something interesting, but found all these women, and the things they went through dull, boring and predictable. I seriously would not recommend it at all.
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