The Jane Austen of contemporary sexual politics transforms domestic fiction this time into a compelling, compassionate and witty inquiry into the price of ambition, the value of work, issues of class, money and the meaning of motherhood. For a group of four New York friends, the past ten years have been defined by marriage and motherhood. Educated to believe that they and their generation would conquer the world, they nonetheless left high-powered jobs to stay at home with their babies. What was intended as a temporary time-out has turned into a decade. Now at forty, without professions to define them, and with children growing up, Amy, Jill, Roberta and Karen wake up to a life and a future that is not what they expected or intended. hen Amy gets drawn into the ambit of a seductive and successful working mother who seems to have it all - work, love family - a lifetime's worth of concerns, both practical and existential open up. As Amy's fascination grows, the four friends are forced to confront the choices they've made in opting for stay-at-home motherhood over career, for domestic over financial responsibility. Wolitzer's narrative brilliantly juggles and manipulates the classic
