Nice writing, depressing take on things

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	• The Ten-Year Nap Meg Wolitzer Riverhead Hardcover, 2008 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 47 reviews view larger image
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Nice writing, depressing take on things

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.

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Good book, but just started it

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.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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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