Rating: 3 stars
Amy and Leo met while working for the same law firm. Married and one son later, what was supposed to be a short maternity turned into 10 years. Now Leo is burdened with their overpriced Manhattan apartment and their son’s expensive private school tuition.
Not that Amy would know how difficult it is for Leo, she becomes “too anxious” when she starts inquiring into their financial state. Strangely, Amy can’t figure out why Leo is no longer attracted to her; with her head in the sand where their life is concerned, her constant prattling on about doctor visits and school bake sales, it truly is a mystery.
Every morning after dropping off their kids, Amy and her closest friends meet at the coffee shop to sit and wonder what happened to their lives that once held so much promise. As they discuss their lifeless marriages, forced “date night” and the lack of sexual interest for all parties involved, not one of them makes any effort to change a thing. The only person who leaves the circle is Jill, Amy’s best friend, when she moves to that far away land known as New Jersey **audible gasp**. Embroiled in her own issues of an attachment disorder to her adopted Russian daughter and using her mother’s suicide, (which happened when she was in college), as a constant excuse for everything. Oh, we’re out of eggs? Excuse me, my mother committed suicide…
Jill is then seemingly replaced in Amy’s life by Penny Ramsey – the woman all the other mother’s avoid out of envy; she has a career, three kids, a successful husband, who always finds time to do her “Safety Day” duty for the school. Oh, she also has something else none of the other moms do, a secret lover --at least until he “drops in” on the family vacation.
The Ten Year Nap was basically a 400 page pity party. It’s not that the writing was bad, it’s actually great writing. There’s just so much “poor me” you can take. At one point, the husband of another tenant in the building dies, and Amy becomes very worried that something like that could happen to her “ruining everything”. Yet, she seems fine with contributing absolutely nothing to the family or the marriage, shaming her over-worked husband into taking them on an expensive vacation and then even worse, buys her mother a $233 paper weight. Later, Amy finds that Leo intends to submit that receipt and many others spent on the family to the firm as company expenses. Rather than realize that they might be in bad financial shape, Amy views her husband as a low-life trying to get over.
With never more than a fleeting thought of “maybe doing volunteer work”, Amy commands and deserves zero sympathy. Sadly, her ten-year-old son seemed more apt to get a job (and a clue) before she did.
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Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition (March 3, 2009)
ISBN-13: 978-1594483547