The Ten-Year Nap
Riverhead Hardcover - Riverhead Hardcover
Release date: 2008-03-27
Hardcover
Author: Meg Wolitzer
Fiction, Fiction - General, Contemporary Women, Fiction / Contemporary Women, Motherhood, Unemployment, Women
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The Ten-Year Nap
Date undefinedI swiped this book from my sister in law on a family vacation and couldn't put it down. It reminds me of an extended conversation/ meditation among girlfriends, and I found myself wincing and laughing out loud in recognition all the way through. Ran out and bought three copies for friends immediately upon finishing it. Honest, compelling and very insightful...
The Ten-Year Nap
Date undefinedAs 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.
The Ten-Year Nap
Date undefinedI'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.
