The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer

The Ten Year Nap
by Meg Wolitzer
Pub. Date: March 2008
Genre: Fiction
368pp

Synopsis from BN.com:
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.

Why I Picked It:
I had personal reasons for this one. Having transitioned from a high-stress career into a work-at-home business, and finally focusing all my time being a stay-at-home mom and homemaker, I was curious to see the direction the author would take with the topic. I fully expected the author to get it wrong.

My Review:
Somehow, Meg Wolitzer narrates an accurate depiction of life as a stay-at-home mother - she introduces the idea by casually including the monotonous, unraveling the distress of what motherhood does to your former self-centered life, defending the overwhelming emotion and fear when faced with leaving your newborn child in the hands of another... She does this intelligently, compellingly, and so competently, I have a sneaking suspicion she might be following me. The first chapter was spell-binding - causing me to grab a pen and paper to write down some passages which excited me to find my own thoughts so eloquently expressed. As the novel progressed, more characters introduced and storylines developed, I found myself thinking, 'Oh, I've thought that,' or, 'I've totally done that!' or 'I wish I could do that...' and I'm not alone.

"Not working, she and her friends sometimes reminded one another, did not mean that you did nothing."

"A law firm or a corporation could never give you what your baby did; it didn't need or love you... How could you choose this over the place on his head where the bones had not yet fully joined or over his puffed little mouth with the outline as beautiful as calligraphy?"

"Out in the real world, you were only occasionally complimented or rewarded... She had no office environment in which everyone saw everything and gave commentary and back slaps... Amy quietly appreciated her child, not during the precocious moments, for those seemed prepackaged for anecdote and narcissistic gratification, but during the small, almost unnoticeable ones."

So she appeals to my need for someone to call me out of my invisibility, provide affirmation, and put words to what I experience each day. I read many reviews on BN.com that stated things like "the book discredits the effort put into being a stay at home mom" or "The 4 women in this book were not a representation of stay at home moms and their struggles" and that the title of the book alone is insulting. I couldn't disagree more. I completely related to the characters; I think this is why I enjoyed the book so much. I interpreted the title of the book to refer to pushing the pause button on our own personal and career goals in order to be available, responsible, and to nurture our little ones. Regardless, I do love it when people take such a personal affront to a work of fiction. I'd say that alone means that the author got it right.

Meg delves lightly into the propaganda and the promises in the early, formative years of the feminist movement, telling women we could have it all, do it all, be it all... Men should pitch in around the house with the chores, the child-rearing. This is what I was taught growing up as well, and I believed it. And I did it for many many years, also with many, many sacrifices. There are definitely good things that came of it. My husband is not a caveman, beer drinking, couch sitting grunter that I wait on hand and foot. My husband readily loads the dishwasher, runs a load of laundry, give the children their baths, reads them stories, takes them to the park, AS WELL AS, works two jobs to support us financially so I can be at home full-time to love, nurture, (scold! discipline!), and raise our children. But do I have moments when I want to run away and hide in the safety of "rational" adults? Ummm, am I human? (But then, I just remember my last job and my dictator oppressor demon boss, and I hug those babies a little tighter and repeat to myself, "This too shall pass... someday soon I'll laugh about this with a glass of wine in my hand....")

The main theme of the book is about how women feel about leaving work behind and not returning for whatever reason. The different characters reflect on their lives and whether or not it was worth it to leave their careers to raise their children, and contemplate what would have happened had they chosen differently.

I found this book to be startlingly accurate, enjoyable, thought-provoking and well stated. I'm very excited to have found a new author to love. I am anxious to pick up something else she has written to see if my opinion holds fast.