Meg Wolitzer's "The 10 Year Nap" Feminism and the Generation Gap

Meg Wolitzer (b Amer 1959) is an acclaimed novelist.  Three of her novels have been made into feature films including "The Wife" with Glenn Close & Jonathan Pryce.  Meg's memes tend to deal with feminism as in "The Wife" and "The 10 Year Nap."  Wolitzer writes about a world that feels dated and obsolete.  As for feminism, it's obscure as to what (if any) debt is owed to women from the 50s & 60s who claim credit for liberating future generation to the luxury of infinite opportunities & choices heretofore denied before the 70s.   Regardless, Wolitzer's wonderful writing creates a world that reflects modern women's wonderland & dilemmas.  Praising past generations for paving the way doesn't seem relevant.  Reading "The 10 Year Nap" (' 08) does awaken multiple topics: generational divides, longterm marital demise, female friendships & intimacies, women aging, children separating,  financial woes and working moms versus non-working (particularly in NYC.)  The novel outlines its  thesis "...the women were startled awake, they sometimes took a momentary dip into the memory of what they had left behind and then, with varying degrees of relief or regret, they let the memory go."  Wolitzer goes on to support her thesis as though her novel were a term paper striving for accolades from mentors.  The novel dallies in the dilemma of bright co-eds for whom their college years cast a lustful sheen upon their glory days.  Without the structure of assignments & grades, the waning years mark an evanescent life before marriage & family.   The usage of interchangeable adjectives for luminescence cannot be overlook and lowers the grade of this (interminable) paper from an A- to a B-.  The 4 main female characters connect through their sons who attend the same elite upper west side private school.  These women offer intriguing insights into women's psyche.  The observations are best made as voyeuristic revelations as when the women came upon their husbands & sons unobserved on their camp out or one friend feeling privileged to share in another's secret tryst.   Most poignant is the central character Amy when she evaluates her marriage.  "Married for 13 years and in the middle of their life together, they often lay in bed at night like two tired prehistoric animals that had individually been out in the world for many hours fighting for survival."  The coffee shop, the Golden Horn, is where the ladies all stop after drop-off.  It became their common foddering ground.  The summations for each of these women are too tidy.  The Golden Horn owner realizes this group is no longer gathering at his establishment.  He didn't think they abandoned his place for another but realized "{it} had held them in place over such a long stretch of time...But now the world, he thought had taken them.  One day you just woke up, and there was somewhere that you needed to be."