The Ten-Year Nap

Description

The New York Times bestselling novel by the author of The Interestings and The Female Persuasion that woke up critics, book clubs, and women everywhere.

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.

Written in Meg Wolitzer’s inimitable, glittering style, The Ten-Year Nap is wickedly observant, knowing, provocative, surprising, and always entertaining, as it explores the lives of its women with candor, wit, and generosity.

Meg Wolitzers’s newest book, The Interestings, is now available from Riverhead Books.”Wolitzer is as precise and rigorous an observer of social status as Tom Wolfe; she is as invisibe and pitiless and clear-eyed a chronicler of female-male tandems as Philip Roth or John Updike.” —Chicago Tribune

“Very entertaining. The tartly funny Wolitzer is a miniaturist who can nail a contemporary type, scene, or artifact with deadeye accuracy.” –The New York Times

“Wolitzer perfectly captures her women’s resolve in the face of a dizzying array of conflicting loyalties. To whom does a woman owe her primary allegiance? Her children? Her mother? Her friends, spouse, community? God forbid, herself?” –The Washington Post 

“What determines a woman’s worth?… Wolitzer’s middle-aged moms are flawed: selfish, neurotic, and occasionally petty. But they– and their conflicts– feels vividly, satisfyingly real.” —Entertainment Weekly 

“Wolitzer’s great ear for dialogues and for insinuating humor into seriousness make this noel a though-provoking pleasure to read.” –The Seattle Times Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She is also the author of the young adult novel, Belzhar. Wolitzer lives in New York City.

INTRODUCTION
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, Amy, Jill, Roberta, and Karen were told by their mothers that their generation would be different. “You girls will be able to do just about anything you want, ”Amy’s mother had predicted. And for a while, this was true. Amy and her friends went to good colleges and began careers as lawyers, film producers, bankers, and artists. But after they got married and had babies, they decided for a variety of reasons to stay home, temporarily, to raise them. Now, ten years later, at age forty, with their children older and no longer in need of their constant presence, and without professions through which to define themselves, the four friends wonder how they got here7mdash;in lives so different from the ones they were brought up to expect—and why they have chosen to stay so long.

As the women redefine their relationship to their children and husbands—and reevaluate their former selves—a lifetime’s worth of concerns opens up, both practical and existential, and questions begin to surface: Is simply being a mother enough? Does a lack of motivation for returning to work signal a weakness in character? Is it possible—or even desirable—to “have it all,” to be an attentive mother, a loving wife, and a successful professional? And if not, is the choice of motherhood over career a betrayal of the hard-fought victories of the women who came before? A carefully observed character study set in the context of the evolution of the feminist ideal over the last several decades, Meg Wolitzer’s The Ten-Year Nap uses the lives of these four friends to explore the breadth and complexity of women’s experiences in the post-feminist era.

When Amy embarks on a relationship with Penny Ramsey, a woman on the other side of the work divide who is an object of both envy and derision to Amy and her friends, the balance of the women’s lives is shifted, and the four women are forced to confront the choices and compromises they have made over the last ten years. As counterpoint, Wolitzer interweaves glimpses into the lives of a previous generation of women, the choices they made and the limitations they faced. Although for the four friends the possibilities may have expanded, each must still choose her own path, and through it, find the woman she has become.

ABOUT MEG WOLITZER

Meg Wolitzer is a novelist and screenwriter. She is the author of This Is Your Life, which was made into the Nora Ephron filmThis Is My Life. She lives in New York City.

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