The Ten-Year Nap

Sad, Compelling

This book shines a light on the lives of several stay at home moms, but obscures some of the joy. I was disappointed with the novel's portrayal of marriage and motherhood. That said, it was interesting and I did enjoy reading it. It just left me feeling very sad.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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BORING

Based on the synopsis, I predicted I would love this book - being a woman who decided to leave career behind and raise the children. I only made it through a couple of chapters. I just didn't care about any of the characters. Too SLOW........can't recommend it.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Dissapointing

I thought this book would be interesting, being based on the lives of women who chose to stay home and be mom. I expected to be an enjoyable read. I was dissapointed however by the simple language, and excessive use of the 'F' word. There are so many other respectable words that can be used in a book, it is nothing more than a sign of a lazy writer who finds it necessary to depend on this word to make her points. Furthermore this book discredits the effort put into being a stay at home mom, and demeans the value of marriage. It is a work of fiction, but I still find it distasteful and dissapointing. After reading this book, I would not go back to read anything else by this author.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Bip .Boop. Beep.

For good fiction to catch fire something needs to be interesting-characters, story or good writing and I believe it's inherent for it to happen in the opening pages and this one doesn't catch fire. I haven't read anything else by her and maybe her previous novels are better. I could have also done without the simple language like Bip, Boop and Beep.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Insult to stay at home moms!

The 4 women in this book were not a representation of stay at home moms and their struggles! The title alone is insulting to women who have stayed at home for 10 years to raise their kids...like we watch soaps all day and are completely mindless because we don't work for corporate america.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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I was expecting more

I had read the Uncoupling by Wolitzer and was looking forward to reading this. As a woman who is considering having children I drawn to the synopsis and thought I could relate to the idea of women losing their sense of self after just taking on the role of mother. But there were so many characters struggling with the same thing that I think the story petered out and I lost interest.

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Ssor Sort of pointless

This book was boring and lacked purpose. I did not find the characters very likable but I suppose the stories of these people were true to life. There was no climax and really just a melancholy hazey feel over all.

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Good read

Great book for a plane ride!

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A mediocre story.

This story seems to be an attempt to have a "Sex In the City" style of writing (four good friends), but updated for the time in life when the ladies are married with children. There was nothing about it that was original or thought provoking. It wasn't difficult to read, but it also wasn't the type of book I was craving to get back to.

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Where is the development of the characters? They just seem to float through the book and you don't really know any of them. I love to read a book that talks about real issues for women, both working outside the home or inside. This books makes the

women look like losers. They aren't. The writing style is non-existent. Reads like someone's diary on a bad day.

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Almost forgot it was fiction!

If you're familiar with the kind of movies that join together three or four stories and, somehow, combine them into one, with great ease, you'll have no problem following this novel. It's about different people living different lives but they all intertwine with one another.
The main theme is about how some women feel about leaving work behind and not
returning for one reason or another. The different characters reflect on their current lives and wonder whether or not it was worth it to leave their careers and stay at home to watch after the kid(s).
After reading this novel you should have a better idea about what goes through
the head of the average mom...whether she is currently working or not.

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Where Do You Want to Go?

"One day you just woke up, and there was somewhere you needed to be." So The Ten-Year Nap ends, but there's a long journey for many women that needs to be traveled before they waken to new possibilities. Meg Wolitzer offers the reader a bevy of unique characters who have stayed home with their children during their early and formative years. Whether that scenario was driven by choice, necessity or just a natural evolution, each woman finds meaning in being a "stay at home Mom" but at the same time contemplates what life would have been like had other roads been traveled. Just how does one be a good mother and find meaning in that role when the world seems to have stigmatized such a choice as meaningless next to that of a working woman? What happens to one's married state when one's children become one's almost entire world, a world disconnected from the corporate or business world occupied by one's spouses?

Meet Amy Lamb, wife of Leo and mother of Mason. She's madly in love with her precocious son, appreciating the precious and tender moments that would surely be missed if she were to be a working Mom. Because she's made this choice, not one totally supported by Leo, Amy aptly describes their financial situation as the metaphor of a voracious wind tunnel, one in which the bills suck out their meager resources and then fill back in the paychecks they need to support their extravagant lifestyle. Leo's at the top of his mediocre career and would rather just say yes to his wife's demands rather than be considered a husband who can't provide for his family. So resentment and distance expand, never voiced for fear of disappointing the other. Sound familiar? Probably to oh so many men and women living in metropolitan homes with a spectacularly extravagant cost of living.

Or perhaps you might relate more to Penny who has fallen out of love with her husband and begun an affair with Ian because his connection with her former artistic world makes her feel more alive than in the humdrum ordinary daily life of a Mom whose biggest divergence from routine will be engaging in the school's Safety Patrol. Even that role presents a frightening, threatening reality for which Penny and Amy are totally unprepared!

Jill Hamlin, Amy's best friend, has her own secret to face. She and her husband have adopted a daughter, Nadia, from Siberia, who offers her own unexpected challenge. So what's the matter with Jill who doesn't seem to have all those expected gushy feelings for her adopted daughter? From where looms the large issues of abandonment underscoring this family's life?

These are just a few snippets of the plot that forces these women to begin questioning what they are doing in a rapidly changing world which forces change both while they are enjoying their "ten-year nap" and as its end draws near. One even gets a glimpse into the world of woman who straddle the world of work and home, including some humorous scenes such as Maggie Thatcher's exhaustion in her famous office from having to juggle such daunting tasks in a man's tough world.

An iconic, memorable novel of a rapidly disappearing lifestyle? Perhaps.

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fascinating contemporary drama

Ten years ago lawyer Amy took maternity leave to give birth; she has not returned to work instead raising her son. Her close friend Jill struggles with life in the Manhattan suburbs. Former artist Roberta struggles with raising a family vs. work. Finally Chinese-American mathematician Karen ponders using her skills or staying home.

These four women struggle with similar issues of whether to stay home to raise a family or go back to work. They are friends, but find little comfort sharing their thoughts of being just like their mothers as each considers bringing in income before they become too old to do so and what they want out of life even as each wonders where the time went.

This fascinating contemporary drama focuses on the premise that kids nuke dreams forcing a parent to make difficult choices between their personal desire and what their offspring needs. Although the action is limited, Meg Wolitzer gets deep into the respective heads of her four stay at home Manhattan moms. Each wonders if they made the right decision since they feel their brains have turned into mush and whether it is too late to go back to work at their dormant profession as technology has moved on.

Harriet Klausner

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ZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!

A "Ten Year Nap", indeed. This book was a snoozer.

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The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer

My book club read this. I didn't make it past page 40 something. It just didn't pull me in. =(

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A reviewer

I am so glad I discovered this book and writer, I cant wait to read her other books! I was engrossed in the stories of the women, they were all unique and yet interconnected by their own self doubts. As a middle-aged woman I could relate to a piece of each ones anxieties and struggles to find themselves in the midst of husbands, children, friends and unfullfilled dreams. These women all seem to be sleep walking through their lives *hence the ten year nap*and blaming it on other people. I loved this book.

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A good, but specific, read...

I highly recommend 'The Ten-Year Nap' for any woman who has put aside a part of herself, career or otherwise, for motherhood and is curious to read a novel that portrays female characters in this position and what their thoughts and reactions to their situations are. Almost every other paragraph I found myself thinking, 'I've thought that,' or, 'I've done that!' or 'I wanted to do that...' Wolitzer does a thorough job of creating a range of characters who portray various aspects and emotions of motherhood. The interspersing vignettes that describe moments in time from the lives of the main characters' mothers, as well as Georgette Magritte and Nadia Comaneci are interesting as well. However, being a novel, these women do live in the somewhat rarified, upper middle class world of Manhattan which makes their lives and situations more palatable and much more readable than if they lived in Plano, Texas. I rarely read novels these days because I just don't care about the lives of fictional people anymore, but I enjoyed reading about these women because I felt I had so much in common with them. I would rather read this novel about women who give up or put aside careers to raise kids rather than a work of nonfiction that documents the effects and outcomes of this choice. And, Wolitzer does a wicked job of parodying these current, popular non- fiction titles - it's fun to try to figure out which book she is mimicking 'or mocking.'

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