Customer Reviews

The Ten-Year Nap

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(31)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

...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.

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!

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.

My review is based on reading about 1/3 of the book and skimming the rest. I could not finish it. Very surprising that this was written in 2008. Most character seemed to be pretty one-dimensional. The challenges they faced seemed too pat, unlike real life which is always more complicated. In the book, you have the woman who stays home and the woman who pursues a career. They don't seem to understand each other. But most women I know, combine roles almost continuously, sometimes taking on a job, then concentrating on kids, then trying to do both. They also try to help each other and are pretty understanding of why some choose to work full time, others to "stay home" or work part time. And the moms I know who "stay home" are often incredibly involved in civic organizations, taking leadership positions or doing hands on work, but not always getting paid. I didn't see this reflected in the book. The author's tone was, to me, patronizing. If it was supposed to be humorous (I think "wickedly funny" was how her writing was described on the book jacket) I totally missed that. Maybe there are real women out there like the protagonist who really do feel like they have been sleeping for 10 years. But I just couldn't "buy" the premise so I had a hard time appreciating the book.

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.

As the mother of two young children, I have done it all. I worked full time (with a stay-at-home Dad) for 18 months, then stayed home full-time for 18 months, then worked 20 hours for 2 years, and now I am working 30 hours. No situation ever seemed perfect. In large part, because there is no perfect decision, only the decision you make at the time. I sat at office lunch tables with mothers who said "I don't know how mother's could stay at home full time. The women in the PTA are airheads, and they drive me crazy. What example do they set for their children when they hover over them 24 hours a day." Then I sat at tables with stay-at-home mothers who would say, "The women who work just don't have the same (exemplary) values that we do. They value money over their children. They are selfish. Why did they have children, anyway?". Neither camp gives the other a break. It is a black & white world of justifying a tough choice, and breaking down others along the way. The reality is there are good working mothers & bad working mothers. There are good SAH mothers, and bad SAH mothers. Women, however, insist on drawing lines and doing what they can to make others feel inadaquate.

I sought out this book in hopes that the author was able put an intelligent & sincere voice to this whole debate. I was hoping to have something to hold up to say "here is something that can help all mothers feel empathy for each other...to understand...to stop the in-fighting". This book didn't even touch the issue. The women in the book DON'T strongly question their choices....ever. The book is mostly about a mother's affair, a mother's worry over her daughter, and the women's friendship. It is not about their choices to work or stay home. The women never even talk among THEMSELVES about working vs. SAH. Never do they struggle with all the pros-cons of the choices they made.

Someone needs to write a book about what REAL women are thinking every day. This book is not it.

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.

I was so looking forward to reading this book! As a working mother of an 18 month old, the title and premise of the book really intrigued me, and I was so excited at the prospect of curling up with this book. And now I can honestly say I wish that I had read any of the other books I bought. I really feel like this SHOULD have been a better book.

Meg Wolitzer is an eloquent writer and, as other reviewers have noted, her phrasing choices are wonderful (her descriptions of alarm clocks going off all over the city is particularly deft). However, in a book that revolves around the choices of four friends who meet regularly, there is a startling dearth of actual dialogue in this story. It seems that all of the characters have these internal conversations and, after a while, there is too much imagery and not enough conversation.

And then there were the characters. Amy, Jill, Karen, and Roberta had all left the work force at a high point at their career, and want to feel lucky, blessed even that they are able to do so, but instead feel trapped into staying home with their children of varying levels of independence. I should have known I was in trouble when I couldn't make any investment in ANY character. Each of them seemed to be in their season of discontent, for a myriad of reasons, but I found it hard to care about any of them, most of them stopping just short of selfish. The most promising subplot of the book -- Amy's friendship with Penny - a friendship based on a juicy secret, and the invitation into a life that seems so satisfying. This portion is written so carefully, so lovingly, I'm with Wolitzer as she explores their friendship, but then it is dropped so quickly (and rather absurdly, in my opinion). The last 25 pages of the book provide tidy endings for everyone, and I wondered what the point of it all was in the first place.

I wouldn't recommend this book.

I really wanted to like this book--in fact, I suggested it for my book club, a group of eight moms with small kids, some of us working, some of us not. For some reason, though, I couldn't relate to the characters--and if anyone should relate to women considering going back to the working world after a long hiatus, it would be me (someone who just went through, well, exactly what Amy Lamb went through.) But I found Amy's "crush" irritating--perhaps because I didn't get what was so appealing about Penny--found Jill to be cold, and was very, very annoyed that Roberta and Karen were so stereotypically ethnic. (The big nose on the Jewish woman; the math whiz Asian with an overbearing, straight out of the Joy Luck Club mom.) So it wasn't a hit with me. I also didn't find the "shocking event" to be particularly believable--or to care much about it, given my apathy for the characters.

I really wanted to like this book, since, as a working mother of two, work-life balance is a subject near and dear to me, but I just didn't care enough about the characters and had to force myself to finish it. I also kept waiting for some kind of point of view, or a stand to be taken, but the book sort of rambles along and there really isn't a definitive position from anyone, which I guess is indicative of the dilemma that a lot of women are in today but I was hoping for more from the book. Also there are many asides involving tangential characters that I didn't think added to the book. I would wait until this comes out on paperback or try to borrow it if you can.