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The Ten-Year Nap (Unabridged) | 
 enlarge | Author: Meg Wolitzer
Publisher: audible.com
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $15.73
You Save: $14.22 (47%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Media: Audio Download
ASIN: B0016P8B0Y
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
The New York Times bestseller from a chanteuse of a writer, a Dietrich of fiction (Los Angeles Times).
The New York Times bestselling novel that woke up critics, book clubs, and women everywhere.
For a group of four New York friends the past decade has been defined largely by marriage and motherhood, but it wasnt always that way. Growing up, they had been told that their generation would be different. And for a while this was true. They went to good colleges, and began high-powered careers. But after marriage and babies, for a variety of reasons, they decided to stay home, temporarily, to raise their children. Now, ten years later, they are still at home, unsure how they came to inhabit lives so different from the ones they expecteduntil a new series of events begins to change the landscape of their lives yet again, in ways they couldnt have predicted.
Written in Meg Wolitzers inimitable, glittering style, The Ten-Year Nap is wickedly observant, knowing, provocative, surprising, and always entertaining, as it explores the lives of its women with candor, wit, and generosity.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 51 more reviews...
 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.
 Thank-you. September 20, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
After the seemingly endless train of poorly edited novels I've had to endure this year, *finally* one that admittedly, i can only guess has been diligently worked on post-author, to bring to market a book as cogent as should be expected by *any* published title. Kudos to Sarah McGrath.
'Ten Year Nap' is a well-crafted meditation on the question 'What happens when smart, educated women temporarily leave the work force for motherhood...and somehow don't find their way back?' Granted, there is a case to be made that it could have been an even better read if there had been less meditation and more storytelling. But she does such a good job at leavening her keen-eyed observational tracts with picante Life-slices that I'll place more weight on the overall power of the book than on its shortcomings. (But I have pondered what the result might have been had she been less discursive...and been more bold in telling such a timely tale in a more conventional manner.)
Here is a novel where the writer's capabilities are clearly in force, with hardly a misstep in the multitude of character threads. Though she is a lover of language and its effectiveness, she never indulges the word-lover in her; this only adds to the strength of 'Nap'.
She made me laugh, she made me cry...she made me think. Ms Wolitzer is a writer with something to say; I'll be delving into her back-catalogue as well as looking forward to what she publishes next.
Well intentioned but needs a plot September 13, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've listened to 6 of the CDs in this audiobook version of The Ten-Year Nap, and I'm giving up. The writing is fine, and the question the author is asking--WTF are these educated, upper-middle class urbanites doing with their lives?--is pertinent. But the story has no forward motion because, well, there is no story. She goes from one less-than-interesting character to the next (one seems hardly different from the others, so I had trouble keeping them straight), spinning out lots of details about their kids, their kids school, their shelved ambitions.
It's like getting together with your friends and kvetching about dull things. If I wanted to hear that kind of talk, I'd just get together with my friends but I'd give them a good talking to about wasting their lives. I prefer a novel that has at least some semblance of a plot, and some conflict. What we are left with here is just a fairly dull read describing lots of dull people. Oh, and the reader of this audiobook doesn't help matters much with her dry, listless intonation.
Nap Not What I Dreamed August 29, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Each of the three stars represents something positive about this book.
The first is for the writing which is a pleasure to read. Every sentence is poetry and each turn of phrase is unique.
The second is for characters who are all well-drawn, share the same story yet are all completely different.
The third star is for the premise, which has not been done: After ten years off the job market, what do stay-at-home moms do with the rest of their lives.
This is where my praise ends. I thought the book was going to start with the women beginning the next phase of their lives. They would all try to re-enter the work force. One would fail; one would get her feet wet with a part-time job; one would go back full time and not be able to compete as she once did; and one would go back and succeed. We would see how women cope with re-entry; how they're treated; what the stigmas are.
What I got was women, who were lucky enough to stay home and raise their children because their husbands carried the financial ball, unappreciative of that. They all have a grass-is-always-greener outlook. Some don't really like their husbands, one is embarrassed of her child with special needs, and all seem jealous of mothers who work, their husbands' successes, and other people's marriages.
It all started to be very cliche -- like Mrs. X in The Nanny Diaries -- Manhattan mothers are as usual portrayed as people who are miserable and unlikeable. And as in most women's fiction, married women must be unhappy because if someone is happily married, then all those who are single or divorced would feel bad.
All the characters in The Ten Year Nap eventually move on, but not in a very empowering or inspiring way.
When I finally closed the book, I was groggy.
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