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The Ten-Year Nap | 
 enlarge | Author: Meg Wolitzer
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $8.39
You Save: $16.56 (66%)
New (44) Used (36) from $8.39
Avg. Customer Rating:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 10763
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 1594489785
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781594489785
ASIN: 1594489785
Publication Date: March 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: We ship books out daily M-F. Tracking number will be emailed when we ship. We list the majority of our books in "Good" condition. If this book had any major flaws, it would be listed in "Acceptable" condition. Easy returns if you are unhappy with book. PLEASE NOTE: We ship immediately, however the Post Office controls delivery speed. In a hurry? Please choose EXPEDITED SHIPPING. Proceeds benefit non-profit Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties.
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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 42 more reviews...
 Annoyed me. Neurotic, self-centered whiners with everything. August 18, 2008
This is a very stereotypical NYC perspective. Despite the author's attempt to portray a wide variety of perspectives without apparent comment, what we get is a very narrow impression of the world and families and it is terribly depressing.
A collection of whining stay at home moms who have it all end up finding slightly more meaning in their self-obsessed lives by not being stay at home moms anymore. Only one character was supposedly happy and that was the least fleshed out, most stereotypical of all the friends, an Asian maths whizz who, despite her decade out of the workforce could still get any job she wanted but prefers not to because her husband is so successful (yes, success is defined by wealth) that she doesn't need to.
There is very little actual affection, let alone love, in this book, not even the incidental moments that pepper our days and the men are universally bland and characterless.
Don't bother with this unless you are really trying to inspire your own existential crisis.
Good idea, flat story August 11, 2008
While I appreciate the scope and density of Wolitzer's undertaking, it seems past the point of the "opt" out generation. Nicely written but, I couldn't relate to whining, unhappy SAHM's with the economy the way it is. The men and children seem unrealized characters and don't react to their mothers' malaise either. I wanted to feel for them and couldn't.
Disappointing August 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As the target audience for this book (40 year old moms in NYC), I was very disappointed. I felt the author tried to pack every possible stereotype into this story and added in a big handful of angst, to boot. Maybe it would be more interesting to women who weren't actually living the story. I don't know. Would not recommend.
 Good book, but just started it August 8, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
Nice writing, depressing take on things August 6, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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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