I found this novel while filling in time at the library – my girls were taking part in a Geronimo Stilton activity. I was looking for something easy to read that didn’t require too much concentration (it was school holidays!).
Here is the blurb …
For a group of four New York friends, the past decade has been largely defined by marriage and motherhood. Educated and reared to believe that they would conquer the world, they then left jobs as corporate lawyers, investment bankers, and film scouts to stay home with their babies. What was meant to be a temporary leave of absence has lasted a decade. Now, at age forty, with the halcyon days of young motherhood behind them and without professions to define them, Amy, Jill, Roberta, and Karen face a life that is not what they were brought up to expect but seems to be the one they have chosen.
But when Amy gets to know a charismatic and successful working mother of three who appears to have fulfilled the classic women’s dream of having it all-work, love, family-without having to give anything up, a lifetime’s worth of concerns, both practical and existential, opens up. As Amy’s obsession with this woman’s bustling life grows, it forces the four friends to confront the choices they’ve made in opting out of their careers-until a series of startling events shatters the peace and, for some of them, changes the landscape entirely.
Written in Meg Wolitzer’s inimitable, glittering style, The Ten-Year Napis wickedly observant, knowing, provocative, surprising, and always entertaining, as it explores the lives of these women with candor, wit, and generosity.
At first this novel seemed a little too close to home. I have a 10 year old and I stopped working, but the more I got into it the less like my life it seemed (which is a good thing!). This is a novel about mothers and a particular section of motherhood. It is about the daily, unrelenting grind of domestic duties – keeping a family organised, clean and feed. However, it is also about stay at home mothers and working mothers. Working out what is best for everyone. I found the characters quite unsympathetic, by which I mean I didn’t really like them, but I think that was the point. They all had more of less drifted into the positions they were now in and needed to be proactive and make changes to find contentment.
More reviews …
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/review/Green-t.html?_r=0
http://readersrespite.blogspot.com.au/2009/05/review-ten-year-nap.html