The Ten Year Nap (2008) by Meg Wolitzer

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Ten Year Nap (2008)

by Meg Wolitzer

Upper East Side, Manhattan

Manhattan: 20/33

New York: 65/105

     I'm firmly into the hardcover library check out/Ebook era for the remainder of Manhattan, having exhausted the ready supply of Audiobooks from the Los Angeles Public Library.  My eyes remain in Manhattan even as my ears have moved on to Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and Staten Island, the last sub-chapter of the 105 titles listed for New York within the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.

   The Ten Year Nap is actually a perfect example of the kind of book I absolutely hate, regardless of literary merit or popular acclaim.  It is ensemble novel about a group of post-9/11 Upper East Side Moms, with a level of diversity that ranges from a WASPY super mom who works and holds down a prestigious job to a Jewish lady who inherited a shitty one bedroom apartment from her merchant parents, where she lives with her puppeteer husband and their kids.  The link between the Mom group is a private grade school where their children attend.

 

  Wolitzer weaves together several of these characters and gives each their own voice.  Unfortunately for the reader, none of the individual episodes are particularly interesting:  An affair! A husband cheating on his expense reports (!?!).  A mother who is afraid she doesn't love her adopted Romanian orphan baby, who also might be developmentally delayed.   As with all novels documenting the vicissitudes of life for the generally well off and well educated, I can't shake the feeling that none of it is worth reading.  Honestly, all these characters and their kids could have died in a private school bus crash at the end of the book and I would have gone, "Huh." and moved on with my life.  In fact, such an ending would have been amazing here.