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The Ten-Year Nap | 
 enlarge | Author: Meg Wolitzer
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $5.99
You Save: $18.96 (76%)
New (4) Used (5) from $2.75
Rating:  58 reviews
Sales Rank: 64745
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 351
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 1.3
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
ASIN: B001KVZ6PC
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 53 more reviews...
 WONDERFUL!! December 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I swiped this book from my sister in law on a family vacation and couldn't put it down. It reminds me of an extended conversation/ meditation among girlfriends, and I found myself wincing and laughing out loud in recognition all the way through. Ran out and bought three copies for friends immediately upon finishing it. Honest, compelling and very insightful...
 For Wolitzer At Her Best, Read The Wife Instead November 20, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a longtime reader of Meg Wolitzer's work, I was very much looking forward to The Ten-Year Nap and picked it up after returning from a brief vacation in New York City. While I could easily visualize real-life versions of Wolitzer's characters, pushing strollers up Lexington Ave or playing with their kids in one of Central Park's pastoral playgrounds, unfortunately that is where my engagement ended. I'm not sure if it's the characters that are out of touch, or their creator, but not a single one of these women felt real or true. They were more like a gathering of types, and I don't believe for one second that these characters would ever befriend each other in any kind of real world setting. (I felt the same thing watching the current re-make of The Women.) Wolitzer is a gifted writer, and The Wife is one of my favorite books of fiction: bracing, surprising, beautifully paced, and exceptionally rich in character. If you want to read Wolitzer at her best, read The Wife before it goes out of print like so much mid-list fiction seems to do. Read The Ten-Year Nap as a trifle. An oddly depressing trifle, but a trifle, one that is well written enough, but off the mark in almost every way. But I can't wait to read whatever Wolitzer does next and am optimistic that she will regain her footing next time out.
A Slog of a Read October 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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 was just OK. I usually zip through books within days; this one truly felt like ten years. It wasn't worthy of its reviews and media coverage.
Profound look at the state of affairs for women and men today September 30, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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 does a wonderful job of representing women with different hopes, dreams, and desires and how they each negotiate marriage, motherhood, and career. For each woman it is different and often not exactly what they expected when they graduated from college.
A difficult book to read... September 26, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
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 was the most exciting with Amy dealing with her obsession with her friends affair. Once the affair and the friendship were over it seemed that she just resigned herself to accepting that she would be happy with a mediocre life and unhappiness as did every one of the other characters.
The book left me feeling empty and wishing that the characters had wanted more out of life for themselves and their families.
Disappointing.
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