Ruth Davis Konigsberg

Epilogue: A Memoir
By Anne Roiphe
Harper, 214 pages, $24.95

Reading the opening lines of Epilogue, Anne Roiphe’s memoir about the death of her husband, I felt the same exasperation that I experienced upon learning, also via memoir, that Katha Pollitt can’t drive a car. Ms. Roiphe, apparently, doesn’t know how to open the locked door of her own apartment: "For the 39 years of our marriage, my husband always pulled out his key and opened the door when we returned from an evening out. During the day I left the door unlocked. We had a doorman." (Is it possible that over the span of four decades, Ms.  read more »

THE TEN-YEAR NAP
By Meg Wolitzer
Riverhead, 351 pages, $24.95

I loved Meg Wolitzer’s previous novels The Wife (2003) and The Position (2005), but when I told a friend that her new book, The Ten-Year Nap, was about stay-at-home mothers who lamented their old selves, and my friend said, “Disenchanted mommies—it’s so cliché to be one now,” I knew she had a point. (She then added, “For the record, I was whining about motherhood before it was cool.”)  read more »