The Ten-Year Nap

As a stay at home mom myself, I was expecting this to be generally more interesting and relatable. I found the whole novel rather dull and characters uninteresting or unlikeable. This is my second Meg Wolitzer novel and I had mixed feelings with her previous work too, even though I really wanted to like her.

I really enjoyed reading this book and as bloke in his late forties that might be surprising. It is a well written easy book to read. If you have had kids you will recognise yourself in here. It is a sort of Nick Hornby for girls.Although set in New York written by a Canadienne/australian it is not at all irritatingMy wife enjoyed it I will buy it for my sister

Have loved this author for a long time. This book does not disappoint. Same beautiful prose you expect from Meg Wolitzer.

Although now at the Granma stage I loved this book. It took me back to when as a graduate mum I shared some of the characters' dilemmas . I can see my daughter going through some of the same tensions as a clever but stay at home mum and my feelings about this are also given voice. It is very well written and carefully observed . I liked being able to hear her 'voice' and feel the atmosphere of Manhattan.The cast was well representative of the school gate ; it's clear life was going to have to change and the road to change was varied and interesting.

'All around the country, the women were waking up. Their alarm clocks bleated one by one, making soothing sounds or the strumming of a favourite song'.The novel is structurally clever - primarily from the point of view of Amy Lamb but also exploring the lives of her three friends who are also stay-at-home mothers, though once they all had full-on careers. The ten year nap refers to the ten year gap from work - the at-home time Amy has had with her son Mason. It also about the nap from taking financial responsibility and from ambition. There are flashbacks to a seventies women's group and their preoccupations and visions of the future. The disappointment of the previous generation of women in Amy's is personified in Amy's mother who keps encouraging her to take socially meaningful work. Amy wakes up in the course of this novel and it's to her own life - not any kind of vision or romantic dream.I see M's reservations in her review but for me this novel works because Wolitzer's observation is so good and sharp - her ability to describe the dilemmas and preoccupations of this generation of mothers is excellent.

I have to confess that this book isn't at all what I'd normally choose ... but I bought it (aargh, any chance of my money back?) on the strength of a fulsome recommendation of the author on the Persephone Books website.But although (most of the time, not all of the time) I love Persephone Books, this is one of those authors on whom we part company.Is it fair to call it chick-lit? It is superior chick-lit for the whinging yummy-mummy generation. Written from a very American perspective, these upper middle-class women have given up high-powered jobs to raise children - and are now wringing their hands about the choices they have made and doors that are now closed to them. It's a quick read, it's skilfully written, it's much more adept than most of its genre and I skipped through several chapters in the bath/on the train .. but, really, I simply didn't care much about these educated, wealthy women and their angst (even those who whinge about money are married to lawyers). You know what it's like, when you get pinioned at a party by the 'sad mummies', desperate for conversation, but they can't talk about anything but their kids and the local schools ... well, this is it in book form!But one thing I did warm to, is that Wolitzer makes it clear that the world of work isn't everything it's cracked up to be, and that it's a big fat lie that everybody is blessed with some talent/passion/ambition.Apparently, she hung around in a cafe on New York's east-side listening to desperate housewives' conversation ... and if anybody's interested, the Golden Horn where the mommies hang out in the book is really Three Guys at 89th and Madison.

...there sure was an awful lot of whining going on. I wasn't particularly "taken" by most of the characters, self-involved women (and some men), living mainly on New York City's Upper East and West Sides. The main character, Amy, had a lawyer-husband and a 10 year old son. She had stopped working as a lawyer when her son was born and seemed to miss working, but not enough to stop whining about it and go back to work. Her mother was a proto-feminist, based in Toronto. Other characters, mothers of sons who attended an elite day school, drifted through the story.Amy's closest friend from college - the daughter of a suicide - had left Manhattan for a leafy suburb in either New Jersey or New York, with her husband and adopted daughter from Russia. The daughter was not quite "with-it" and the mother felt little emotional connection with the child.I kept waiting for the parents to have an "aha" moment and take the kid to be tested. Nope, didn't happen til the end.Other friends had other "issues". I basically wanted to slap them all and say "quit whining and do something".I would advise not investing a great deal of time or money in this book. If you haven't already bought it, wait til it's out in trade paper or borrow it from the library.