King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: The Ten Year Nap

author: Meg Wolitzer

published: 2009

pages: 383

first line: All around the country, the women were waking up.

rated: 4 out of 5

From the bestselling author of The Wife and The Position, a feverishly smart novel about female ambition, motherhood, and marriage -- and four friends who confront the choices they've made.



For a group of four New York friends the past decade has been defined largely by marriage and motherhood, but it wasn't 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 expected -- until a new series of events begins to change the landscape of their lives yet again, in ways they couldn't have predicted.

I found this to be a great book. I was hooked from page one. The way Meg Wolitzer writes, you almost forget you are reading fiction.





The book starts off with Amy and Leo. They met at the law firm where they both worked. After they were married, and Amy became pregnant, she decided to leave work for a few weeks then return. Now, 10 years later, Amy is still a stay at home mom. Amy flashes back to when she was a child, being raised my her feminist mother.

As they grew older, the early experience of having once had a mother who was available all the time -an iconic figurine like the Statue of Liberty, raising a glass of milk and serenely handing it over-lost its clarity. Had Antonia ever truly belonged to them? Yes, yes, she had, and the ownership had been extraordinary, though they had taken it for granted.

Amy's friends are also a part of the story. You get to read about their lives, some of them are working moms, while others of course, are stay at home moms. One of the working mothers is having an affair, and you kind of get to see how she brings Amy into her secret life. You see how Amy reacts to her friends affair and to her friends lover. She wonders if she should tell her own husband or keep this information ot herself.


One of the mothers adopted a baby from Russia, and you see how she feels guilt for taking a child way from her culture and doubt at her own skills at being a mom. Did she make the right choice or would the baby have been better off being adopted by a Russian family?



Another one of the moms feels inadequate when she sees the working moms in thier business suits at the school meetings. She feels like she doesn't do enough with herself while her son is in school.





This is a book about motherhood. About moms who work and about ones who don't. I think any mom could relate to the characters in this book and the feelings they have. How many of us hasn't felt guilty at leaving our children with a sitter while we go to work? Or how many moms haven't felt like they had to defend their choice to be stay at home moms, especially once the children are a bit older?




This is also a book about friendship and family and just life in general. As I said, it almost reads like non fiction at times.




There were several passages that I could really relate to, like this one:

You were the gatekeeper and nerve center and the pulsing, chugging heart of your family, the one whom everyone came to and needed things from. You were the one that had to coax that unconcious child from his bed, day upon day.

Women who worked were exhausted; women who didn't work were exhausted. There was no cure for the oceanic exhaustion that overwhelmed them. If you were a working mother you would always lose in some way, and if you were a full-time mother you would lose too. Everyone wanted something from you; you were hit up the minute you rose from your bed.

The one thing I didn't like about this book, is the cover. I don't like the faded buildings in the background or the clock hands. If I had seen this book on a shelf somewhere, I probably wouldn't have grabbed it, because of the cover. And that would be a shame, because it's a great read. Never judge a book by its cover.



Special thanks to Caitlin Price @ http://www.fsbassociates.com/ for sending me a copy of this book to read and review.