The Ten-Year Nap

I heard a recent interview with Meg Wolitzer on one of the afternoon talk shows I listen to on Sirius/XM—I believe it was on Broadminded. Something about the way she spoke or what she said about her latest novel grabbed me.

Now I'm not a good book club member. I don't go looking for themes and rationales and what did the author really mean when she said, "increasingly and transparently annoyed"? I just want to be entertained. I want to escape my troubles for a half-an-hour and revel in someone else's troubles.

Certain book topics, certain key words an author might say in an interview, will always reel me in. Adoption is, of course, a hot topic. Love late in life interests me. Sewing, quilting, pottery, beading—I like to see how authors such as Debbie Macomber or Kate Jacobs will thread one of my interests through a story. And once I find a book I like, I tend to read everything that author has written. John D. McDonald, Agnes DeMille, Harry Kemelman, Nora Roberts—read 'em all! (My lifelong best friend just sent me another bookmark for my birthday, saying someone as well-read as I can never have too many bookmarks. She's right!)

So as I got into "The Ten-Year Nap," I couldn't remember why I bought it. The Publisher's Weekly review on the Amazon product page says, "In her latest novel, Wolitzer (The Wife; etc.) takes a close look at the opt out generation: her cast of primary characters have all abandoned promising careers (in art, law and academia) in favor of full-time motherhood." I couldn't see that as I was reading. I saw the interconnectedness of the one generation of women, but the jumping around from generation to generation and story to story lost me. About a third of the way into the book there was the introduction of an adopted child, so I thought maybe that was what had grabbed me, but that character didn't figure too prominently in the book.

So the story itself never grabbed me—I kept reading because I hate to just drop a book midstream. I kept thinking I'd find the reason for my purchase if I read one more chapter. That never happened.

But what happened is I discovered an author who is simply fabulous at choosing words and meshing them together to make absolutely beautiful sentences. As sentences and paragraphs unfolded in front of me, I kept thinking, "Oh, that's brilliant." "Oh, that's how I could put those words together."

So you can bet I will be running to the library to find more books by Meg Wolitzer. She is an incredible craftsman, and I look forward to reading more of her works.

This week I'm reading a chapter of Martha Beck's "Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith." My third husband was a Mormon, and I considered the friends from that time in my life to be very dear friends, even though I lost all of those friends when the marriage ended. Within the Mormon community, you're either all the way in or all the way out, in my experience. There's no halfway, and if you don't believe everything they believe, you're not going to find a place on my calendar. Just sayin'. Just my opinion. Beck is an excellent writer and story-teller, and I look forward to each breakfast, lunch, and dinner break to devour another chapter.

And what are you reading?