August Mamalit Pick: The Ten-Year Nap

The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer seems, at the beginning, to be mainly a novel about a woman who quit her job as an attorney to stay home with her baby son and who, ten years later, is struggling to figure out what her place is in life and where she wants her life to go. It turns out, however, that the book is more of what we would call an ensemble piece if it were a play, with a fairly in-depth exploration of the way work and family issues have impacted the lives of all of the women in the story, and even of their mothers and some tangentially related women. Each individual piece is very well written and substantive and I found myself really enjoying the novel, although I seldom do enjoy popular, mainstream, contemporary adult fiction, as I am often somewhat repulsed by the characters in bestsellers. Although I really enjoyed reading the novel and enjoyed each piece taken individually, I am not sure that I like the message I get when all the pieces of the ensemble are put together. Taken together, at-home motherhood seems to be portrayed as something rather childish and unsatisfying in the long run. The women who are content with it in the book are a bit weird. The mothers with whom one is led to identify find it troublesome. These viewpoints seem valid enough in each individual woman's story, but I do not like the message when they are all put together. It seems a bit disrespectful to me. The novel is still an excellent read, however, if one can try not to find a theme, but take the women's stories separately instead.