2008-11-03 More than chick lit

'All around the country, the women were waking up. Their alarm clocks bleated one by one, making soothing sounds or the strumming of a favourite song'.

The novel is structurally clever - primarily from the pov of Amy Lamb but also exploring the lives of her three friends who are also stay-at-home mothers, though once they all had full on careers. The ten year nap refers to the ten year gap from work - the at-home time Amy has had with her son Mason. It also about the nap from taking financial responsibility and from ambition. There are flashbacks to a seventies women's group and their preoccupations and visions of the future. The disappointment of the previous generation of women in Amy's is personified in Amy's mother who keps encouraging her to take socially meaningful work. Amy wakes up in the course of this novel and it's to her own life - not any kind of vision or romantic dream.

I see M's reservations in her review but for me this novel works because Wolitzer's observation is so good and sharp - her ability to describe the dilemmas and preoccupations of this generation of mothers is excellent.