Helpful Score: 7
If you are one of those people who enjoys the thrill of watching paint dry, then, by all means, pick up this book and read it. It really is THAT boring. And, as such, I think it's extremely insulting to the lives of the stay-at-home Moms it attempts to chronicle. (As a working mother myself, I can't claim personal insult, but I am insulted on behalf of all my SAHM friends.)
If you want to explore the inner life, the complex decisions, trade-offs, and compromises, mostly to professional self-development and financial gain, that SAHMs face, pick up a copy of "The Mommy Wars" instead. Yes, believe it or not, NON-FICTION is more interesting and exciting than reading this fictional account of 3 SAHMs in NYC wandering around crippled by their own inaction and self-pity.
In addition, there is very little talk about the JOY of stay-at-home motherhood and the benefits of choosing uninterrupted years raising your children over forays into the often brutal and harsh working world. The only happy character in the book is a woman whose banker husband provides an extremely cushy life for her and her twin sons. She is content in her beautiful apartment, SUV, and her worry-free life. Who WOULDN'T be? Is this a realistic picture of stay-at-home motherhood? It's definitely NOT representative.
Moreover, this one happy woman, who even adores her husband, also happens to be a brilliant mathmetician who goes on interviews and receives job offers all the time, but turns them down. So, the message is, as long as you have a rich, adoring husband and have a professional skill that can nail you a great-paying job any time you want, then personal and professional satisfaction come wrapped all in one in your cocoon of stay-at-home motherhood. Everyone else? You're just doomed to wander aimlessly, unhappily around, attempting to find your "calling," and, eventually, settling for an uninspiring, sometimes low-paying job to get out of the house and help your husband pay the bills.
According to this book, feminism really IS dead and gone.
If you want to explore the inner life, the complex decisions, trade-offs, and compromises, mostly to professional self-development and financial gain, that SAHMs face, pick up a copy of "The Mommy Wars" instead. Yes, believe it or not, NON-FICTION is more interesting and exciting than reading this fictional account of 3 SAHMs in NYC wandering around crippled by their own inaction and self-pity.
In addition, there is very little talk about the JOY of stay-at-home motherhood and the benefits of choosing uninterrupted years raising your children over forays into the often brutal and harsh working world. The only happy character in the book is a woman whose banker husband provides an extremely cushy life for her and her twin sons. She is content in her beautiful apartment, SUV, and her worry-free life. Who WOULDN'T be? Is this a realistic picture of stay-at-home motherhood? It's definitely NOT representative.
Moreover, this one happy woman, who even adores her husband, also happens to be a brilliant mathmetician who goes on interviews and receives job offers all the time, but turns them down. So, the message is, as long as you have a rich, adoring husband and have a professional skill that can nail you a great-paying job any time you want, then personal and professional satisfaction come wrapped all in one in your cocoon of stay-at-home motherhood. Everyone else? You're just doomed to wander aimlessly, unhappily around, attempting to find your "calling," and, eventually, settling for an uninspiring, sometimes low-paying job to get out of the house and help your husband pay the bills.
According to this book, feminism really IS dead and gone.
Helpful Score: 5
I agree with the previous reviewer - this book is boring. I kept reading and reading waiting for something to happen, but this book goes nowhere. I tried to give it a chance, at least so I could figure out the point but I couldn't finish it.
Helpful Score: 3
Too many characters; hard to follow; boring
Helpful Score: 2
Quite boring read. Hard for me to relate to any of the moms in the book. I am a stay-at-home mom, but I had little in common with them in the book.
This book was 350 pages of nothing. My book club read this and what a disaster. Only 1 out of 8 people actually liked it. The only reason I gave it any stars at all is because the writing was not bad. However, nothing happened. It was incredibly anti-climactic and the ending I felt was depressing and made me not want to look towards the future. Overall I do not recommend this book!!
Helpful Score: 1
This is not about my afternoon sleeping habits...and my naps rarely reach the length where they are measured in years! The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer is the best book I've read in, well, years! Or maybe it just seemed like that since I wolfed it down over the course of two rainy, gloomy days this past weekend.
The Ten-Year Nap delves into the lives of some very different women living in and around New York City who are contemplating their lives after ten years of motherhood. I say "some" women because, although the description says four women, there are many women whose lives are touched on throughout the book and Meg Wolitzer crafts her book so beautifully that you never feel like, "Oh, this is Karen's chapter." Their lives weave in and out of one another's seamlessly. Every time you think something has the chance to devolving into cliche, it doesn't.
None of the women is a cookie-cutter stereotype of the "I left my career and regret it" or "I am the earth mother who needs nothing more than my children to complete me" roles that we often see in books focused on mothers. There are so many situations that will make you think, make you look at your own feelings about motherhood and make you think about the judgments you make about others.
Wolitzer even manages to weave in the past, interspersing the experiences of women of previous generations. What happened to the feminists and their consciousness-raising groups of the 60s? What bearing does that have on today's women? What happens to a woman who left her dream behind because marriage and family was expected?
Part of what made this book so compelling was that I read it following a typical Friday night with my friends who are also a diverse group of women. And strangely, I wrote this post about the value of diversity of friends on Saturday morning, before I became engrossed in The Ten-Year Nap. Wolitzer captures this sentiment and the messy overlaps of and distances between our perspectives.
My thanks (and my husband's irritation for me being AWOL a good part of the weekend) go to Caitlin Price at FSB Associates for sending me a copy to review.
The Ten-Year Nap delves into the lives of some very different women living in and around New York City who are contemplating their lives after ten years of motherhood. I say "some" women because, although the description says four women, there are many women whose lives are touched on throughout the book and Meg Wolitzer crafts her book so beautifully that you never feel like, "Oh, this is Karen's chapter." Their lives weave in and out of one another's seamlessly. Every time you think something has the chance to devolving into cliche, it doesn't.
None of the women is a cookie-cutter stereotype of the "I left my career and regret it" or "I am the earth mother who needs nothing more than my children to complete me" roles that we often see in books focused on mothers. There are so many situations that will make you think, make you look at your own feelings about motherhood and make you think about the judgments you make about others.
Wolitzer even manages to weave in the past, interspersing the experiences of women of previous generations. What happened to the feminists and their consciousness-raising groups of the 60s? What bearing does that have on today's women? What happens to a woman who left her dream behind because marriage and family was expected?
Part of what made this book so compelling was that I read it following a typical Friday night with my friends who are also a diverse group of women. And strangely, I wrote this post about the value of diversity of friends on Saturday morning, before I became engrossed in The Ten-Year Nap. Wolitzer captures this sentiment and the messy overlaps of and distances between our perspectives.
My thanks (and my husband's irritation for me being AWOL a good part of the weekend) go to Caitlin Price at FSB Associates for sending me a copy to review.
Helpful Score: 1
This is a good read. You'll be drawn into these women's stories. That being said, I cared more about some of them than others. At times, I could feel the author's presence. By that I mean, I stopped being inside the characters' world and became aware of what the author was trying to do with the characters. That being said, this book is worth reading and captures certain truths and realities of motherhood quite nicely.
Helpful Score: 1
A disappointment. I was totally drawn into the premise - just how does a professional woman rejoin the career world after taking time off to raise children? But the main characters don't actually jump start their careers until the very end of the book, almost like an afterthought. I thought the transition from at-home to back-to-work would be the meat of the story. I did like the shared narrative between main characters, which kept the story more interesting than it would have been otherwise. But overall, I did not find the main characters very likeable and the prose did not draw me into the story.
This book dragged on and on and on. I read it front to back, however it didn't keep my attention.
This book was okay, not great. While it was well-written, the story really did not move along at all until the very end of the almost 400 pages. The entire book was spent learning about the characters' backgrounds and their parents' backgrounds and where everyone came from to get where they are today.
And I don't have kids so maybe I don't understand, but the entire way through this book with Amy and her friends talking about how they stayed home to be with their kids for the last ten years and debating going back to work, blah blah blah, I just kept thinking "get off your butt and do something!" Her one kid is TEN, he's at school all day, her husband is barely able to make ends meet, find some way to contribute! There are certainly millions of stay at home mothers out there who are amazing and do so much for their families and their communities- this lady is not one of them.
The characters were boring, immature and selfish and the book really did not do much for me. I was glad when it was over.
And I don't have kids so maybe I don't understand, but the entire way through this book with Amy and her friends talking about how they stayed home to be with their kids for the last ten years and debating going back to work, blah blah blah, I just kept thinking "get off your butt and do something!" Her one kid is TEN, he's at school all day, her husband is barely able to make ends meet, find some way to contribute! There are certainly millions of stay at home mothers out there who are amazing and do so much for their families and their communities- this lady is not one of them.
The characters were boring, immature and selfish and the book really did not do much for me. I was glad when it was over.
Not my kind of read.
A story about a bunch of women who don't know what they want. Confused to say the least, living in NYC, with husbands and children they don't always understand. Book goes back and forth between them as children, dealing with their mothers, and the present day. They seem to spend a lot of time feeling sorry for themselves, wondering if they should go back to their previous jobs air stay home with their kids. Made me feel a whole lot better about my own life.
I have read other books by Meg Wolitzer that were a lot better. This one just did not capture my interest at all.
