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The Ten-Year Nap
by Meg Wolitzer
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Edition: Hardcover
Publication Date: March 27, 2008
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
ISBN: 1594489785
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 5409
Average Customer Rating: 
List price: $24.95
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Showing page 1 of 12
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Reviews
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 For Wolitzer At Her Best, Read The Wife Instead, November 20, 2008
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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.
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A Slog of a Read, October 12, 2008
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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.
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 Profound look at the state of affairs for women and men today, September 30, 2008
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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.
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A difficult book to read..., September 26, 2008
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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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 Thank-you., September 20, 2008
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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.
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Reviews
