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My Year of Rest and Relaxation
欧宝娱乐 Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Fiction (2018)From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman鈥檚 efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes.
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn鈥檛 she? She鈥檚 young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn鈥檛 just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It鈥檚 the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn鈥檛 she? She鈥檚 young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn鈥檛 just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It鈥檚 the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.
289 pages, Paperback
First published July 10, 2018
24.8k people are currently reading
531k people want to read
About the author
Ottessa Moshfegh
39听books22.4k听followersOttessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands, her second and third novels, were New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World and a novella, McGlue. She lives in Southern California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74,334 reviews
December 18, 2018
TL;DR: I fucking hated this book. My Year of Rest and Relaxation could have been good. I was expecting something like : a weird, disturbing book about a young woman dissociating from modern society. Instead I got 300 pages of vapid bullshit that seems unreasonably proud of itself. If you're here looking for recommendations, I'd give this one a pass and read the Kleeman instead.
Another entry in the baffling 'women can be assholes too!' movement, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is all smoke and mirrors: Moshfegh is a good enough writer on a sentence level to make it seem like her book is about something, but I can assure you that it is absolutely not. There's so little substance in the actual text that I'm not even sure how to go about this review. I've been reading good reviews all morning to try and figure out what I missed, but a lot of people who wrote positive reviews didn't actually like it either: it's an unpleasant reading experience, and a lot of the book's high ratings seem to be on the dubious merit of that unpleasantness. I wonder if the sunk cost fallacy isn't at work here: if someone published this and someone edited it and someone nominated the author's previous work for awards, then this must be good, right? We wouldn't all have put so much effort into a boring hack. I don't think that writing about nasty people doing nasty things takes any particular skill, though, or that it has intrinsic value - the only skill seems to be in a marketing strategy which has convinced us that if we don't like a book that means it's good, actually.
I'm not sure how to go about this other than by listing this book's apparent strengths, according to its fans:
The characters are so unlikeable!
It's probably clear at this point that I don't think writing unlikeable characters for the sake of being able to is very compelling; it seems conceited on the part of the author, and a bit like I'm being invited in on a mean spirited joke. It's strange to me that this is a draw for other readers. I'm glad that Moshfegh has come to the conclusion that rich, pretty people can be unlikeable; I don't have any particular desire to discuss that with her at length.
Moshfegh has a response for complaints like mine, from an interview she did with for her novel Eileen: "When I ask Moshfegh about the reception of the novel, she rails against those who 'want to know in this juicy way why I have written such an unlikable character. I just want to say: 鈥楬ow dare you?鈥�' We live in a world in which mass murderers are re-elected, she says, yet it鈥檚 an unlikable female character that is found to be offensive: it鈥檚 'sexist and idiotic'."
I think that calling this out as sexist - which is the typical answer, and not a Moshfegh original by any means - is a smokescreen. We're not talking about an actual woman who exists in the world: we're talking about a character that someone intentionally made up. Characters don't end up this horrible by accident, and it's worth questioning why someone sat down and labored over a character so unrealistically nasty. I really don't think there's a good reason, which is why the question is always met with immediate deflection. It seems like a sneaky way for female authors to show how much better and smarter they are than other women while pretending that they're practicing some radical act of feminism.
But it's so weird and dark and disturbing!
The narrator was so removed from her own experiences that this didn't read as very dark or disturbing to me, but even if it had, I don't think that's an especially compelling reason to read something. (Incidentally, this is also why I've drifted away from Chuck Palahniuk.) Most of my favorite books this year were disturbing but they were also about something, and that's why I liked them; a book that's trying to be disturbing at the expense of having a plot or even one character that you can empathize with is like a bad jump scare. It works, but it's easy and shallow and forgettable. It takes no particular skill and has no meaning. I've considered that this actually is the point - that books don't have to mean anything, that they can just exist as objects untethered from any deeper philosophical inquiry - but it turns out that is a point after all, it's just a stupid one.
This book is a detailed example of what it is like to be depressed.
You know what? Sure, I'll give it this one. Depression makes the world boring and it can make depressed people very difficult to like. I'm not sure that taking a deep dive into "depressed people are self centered and horrible" is a helpful or kind thing to do, but it's at least not wholly inaccurate.
I do take offense at our culture's continued fascination with the idea that people can be both rich and depressed. I realize, as all depressed people do, that depression isn't contingent on our material circumstances: I fucking know that rich people can be depressed. I also know that having money lifts a huge burden off of their shoulders. You can't buy happiness but you can certainly buy therapy, medication, and the time to properly take care of yourself - things which are categorically denied to people who aren't very wealthy or very privileged. I am not the only one who drags my depressed ass to work every day for the privilege of not being able to afford the medication that might make it easier to stay alive, and I do not give a single shit about how depressed rich people may or may not be. Let's all agree to stop telling this story in 2019.
But the writing is so charming and funny!
Is it?
The ending is great: it shows that the narrator has grown & changed. Such a punch in the gut! & very uplifting.
There is a trite, stupid little chapter after our narrator has come out of her Infermiterol daze where she starts going outside and feeding squirrels corn flakes in the park. I suppose this is meant to show that she has changed; now, she is capable of seeing beauty and engaging with a world outside of herself. It felt shallow and unearned, but perhaps it was meant to feel shallow and unearned, because then the final chapter of this book is a half-page summary of the narrator discovering that her friend Reva died in the World Trade Center on September 11th. She has recorded a video from the news in which a woman leaps to her death from the burning building. The narrator decides to believe that the woman is Reva, and watches the footage over and over, apparently for years. The book's last line, on which people seem to be fairly divided, is this: There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.
This is an incredibly offensive thing to say, made worse because it's also fucking meaningless. I have the sense that Moshfegh thinks she can get away with this by putting it in the mouth of a horrendous character and giving it a clever little twist: our narrator has spent the past year asleep because she can't face the mundanity of her day to day life, but a woman who has leapt to her death from a burning building is really awake. Do you get it, though? Do you see what she did there? It's a juxtaposition between sleeping and wakefulness and life and death. It's like, you can totally sleepwalk through life and someone dying can be truly awake, you know what I mean?
This is exactly the kind of ~*~deep~*~ shit my friends and I used to come up with when we were 19 and stoned; it's a literary version of that 'real eyes realize real lies' nonsense that we used to post on Myspace. It's dumb word play that's purporting to actually mean something and the fact that it's the last line of this fucking stupid book is infuriating to me. Is it supposed to be funny? Ironic? Am I supposed to think that the narrator is a better person, or just the same shithead that she always was but a year older? Is it a treatise on the meaning of the book? Is it just Ottessa Moshfegh having a laugh that the literary establishment has welcomed her trite, boring nonsense with open arms, or am I supposed to be taking this seriously?
This book defies categorization not because it's tricky, clever, or meaningful, but because it's emotionally and thematically empty. It's not about anything and it has nothing to say. It's a series of images strung together to absolutely no end and its strongest selling point is that with its last line it finally engendered a single emotion in me: incredulous rage.
In the same Guardian interview I mentioned above, Moshfegh said that "[her] writing lets people scrape up against their own depravity, but at the same time it鈥檚 very refined 鈥� It鈥檚 like seeing Kate Moss take a shit." This is a fucking hilariously conceited thing for someone to say, but it also introduces the only worthwhile question I can muster about Moshfegh's work: who is this for? What audience is being allowed to (lol) "scrape up against their own depravity"? I can't say, other than that I'm clearly not a part of it.
When you don't like books like this, people are quick to pin the blame on you: you just don't get it. Things don't have to be likeable to be important. Sometimes, though, there's nothing there to get, and being unlikeable doesn't give something intrinsic value. I hate the idea that important literature can't also be fun, and I hate this senseless hackjob of a book.
Another entry in the baffling 'women can be assholes too!' movement, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is all smoke and mirrors: Moshfegh is a good enough writer on a sentence level to make it seem like her book is about something, but I can assure you that it is absolutely not. There's so little substance in the actual text that I'm not even sure how to go about this review. I've been reading good reviews all morning to try and figure out what I missed, but a lot of people who wrote positive reviews didn't actually like it either: it's an unpleasant reading experience, and a lot of the book's high ratings seem to be on the dubious merit of that unpleasantness. I wonder if the sunk cost fallacy isn't at work here: if someone published this and someone edited it and someone nominated the author's previous work for awards, then this must be good, right? We wouldn't all have put so much effort into a boring hack. I don't think that writing about nasty people doing nasty things takes any particular skill, though, or that it has intrinsic value - the only skill seems to be in a marketing strategy which has convinced us that if we don't like a book that means it's good, actually.
I'm not sure how to go about this other than by listing this book's apparent strengths, according to its fans:
The characters are so unlikeable!
It's probably clear at this point that I don't think writing unlikeable characters for the sake of being able to is very compelling; it seems conceited on the part of the author, and a bit like I'm being invited in on a mean spirited joke. It's strange to me that this is a draw for other readers. I'm glad that Moshfegh has come to the conclusion that rich, pretty people can be unlikeable; I don't have any particular desire to discuss that with her at length.
Moshfegh has a response for complaints like mine, from an interview she did with for her novel Eileen: "When I ask Moshfegh about the reception of the novel, she rails against those who 'want to know in this juicy way why I have written such an unlikable character. I just want to say: 鈥楬ow dare you?鈥�' We live in a world in which mass murderers are re-elected, she says, yet it鈥檚 an unlikable female character that is found to be offensive: it鈥檚 'sexist and idiotic'."
I think that calling this out as sexist - which is the typical answer, and not a Moshfegh original by any means - is a smokescreen. We're not talking about an actual woman who exists in the world: we're talking about a character that someone intentionally made up. Characters don't end up this horrible by accident, and it's worth questioning why someone sat down and labored over a character so unrealistically nasty. I really don't think there's a good reason, which is why the question is always met with immediate deflection. It seems like a sneaky way for female authors to show how much better and smarter they are than other women while pretending that they're practicing some radical act of feminism.
But it's so weird and dark and disturbing!
The narrator was so removed from her own experiences that this didn't read as very dark or disturbing to me, but even if it had, I don't think that's an especially compelling reason to read something. (Incidentally, this is also why I've drifted away from Chuck Palahniuk.) Most of my favorite books this year were disturbing but they were also about something, and that's why I liked them; a book that's trying to be disturbing at the expense of having a plot or even one character that you can empathize with is like a bad jump scare. It works, but it's easy and shallow and forgettable. It takes no particular skill and has no meaning. I've considered that this actually is the point - that books don't have to mean anything, that they can just exist as objects untethered from any deeper philosophical inquiry - but it turns out that is a point after all, it's just a stupid one.
This book is a detailed example of what it is like to be depressed.
You know what? Sure, I'll give it this one. Depression makes the world boring and it can make depressed people very difficult to like. I'm not sure that taking a deep dive into "depressed people are self centered and horrible" is a helpful or kind thing to do, but it's at least not wholly inaccurate.
I do take offense at our culture's continued fascination with the idea that people can be both rich and depressed. I realize, as all depressed people do, that depression isn't contingent on our material circumstances: I fucking know that rich people can be depressed. I also know that having money lifts a huge burden off of their shoulders. You can't buy happiness but you can certainly buy therapy, medication, and the time to properly take care of yourself - things which are categorically denied to people who aren't very wealthy or very privileged. I am not the only one who drags my depressed ass to work every day for the privilege of not being able to afford the medication that might make it easier to stay alive, and I do not give a single shit about how depressed rich people may or may not be. Let's all agree to stop telling this story in 2019.
But the writing is so charming and funny!
Is it?
The ending is great: it shows that the narrator has grown & changed. Such a punch in the gut! & very uplifting.
There is a trite, stupid little chapter after our narrator has come out of her Infermiterol daze where she starts going outside and feeding squirrels corn flakes in the park. I suppose this is meant to show that she has changed; now, she is capable of seeing beauty and engaging with a world outside of herself. It felt shallow and unearned, but perhaps it was meant to feel shallow and unearned, because then the final chapter of this book is a half-page summary of the narrator discovering that her friend Reva died in the World Trade Center on September 11th. She has recorded a video from the news in which a woman leaps to her death from the burning building. The narrator decides to believe that the woman is Reva, and watches the footage over and over, apparently for years. The book's last line, on which people seem to be fairly divided, is this: There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.
This is an incredibly offensive thing to say, made worse because it's also fucking meaningless. I have the sense that Moshfegh thinks she can get away with this by putting it in the mouth of a horrendous character and giving it a clever little twist: our narrator has spent the past year asleep because she can't face the mundanity of her day to day life, but a woman who has leapt to her death from a burning building is really awake. Do you get it, though? Do you see what she did there? It's a juxtaposition between sleeping and wakefulness and life and death. It's like, you can totally sleepwalk through life and someone dying can be truly awake, you know what I mean?
This is exactly the kind of ~*~deep~*~ shit my friends and I used to come up with when we were 19 and stoned; it's a literary version of that 'real eyes realize real lies' nonsense that we used to post on Myspace. It's dumb word play that's purporting to actually mean something and the fact that it's the last line of this fucking stupid book is infuriating to me. Is it supposed to be funny? Ironic? Am I supposed to think that the narrator is a better person, or just the same shithead that she always was but a year older? Is it a treatise on the meaning of the book? Is it just Ottessa Moshfegh having a laugh that the literary establishment has welcomed her trite, boring nonsense with open arms, or am I supposed to be taking this seriously?
This book defies categorization not because it's tricky, clever, or meaningful, but because it's emotionally and thematically empty. It's not about anything and it has nothing to say. It's a series of images strung together to absolutely no end and its strongest selling point is that with its last line it finally engendered a single emotion in me: incredulous rage.
In the same Guardian interview I mentioned above, Moshfegh said that "[her] writing lets people scrape up against their own depravity, but at the same time it鈥檚 very refined 鈥� It鈥檚 like seeing Kate Moss take a shit." This is a fucking hilariously conceited thing for someone to say, but it also introduces the only worthwhile question I can muster about Moshfegh's work: who is this for? What audience is being allowed to (lol) "scrape up against their own depravity"? I can't say, other than that I'm clearly not a part of it.
When you don't like books like this, people are quick to pin the blame on you: you just don't get it. Things don't have to be likeable to be important. Sometimes, though, there's nothing there to get, and being unlikeable doesn't give something intrinsic value. I hate the idea that important literature can't also be fun, and I hate this senseless hackjob of a book.
September 15, 2024
I think the best books force themselves into our minds and make a quiet disturbance there. They strike something in us, and even if we don鈥檛 fully understand it, we feel altered in some strange and irrevocable way.
It is hard to know what to make of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and its narrator. I inhaled the story in two quick sittings and found myself afterwards in something of a daze. My mind was spinning, a compass without a lodestone, and no matter how much I held up my feelings to the light, I could not decide if I were feeling bereft that it was over, or simply relieved.
The narrator of My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a rich, orphaned, conventionally beautiful WASP in her twenties who hopes to annihilate her past and emerge an improved version of herself by devoting an entire year to nothing but sleep. To ensure this transformation, she dopes herself up on prescription and over-the-counter drugs. In her waking hours, she makes regular visits to the street corner bodega, to the drug store, and less regular ones to Dr. Tuttle for the purpose of restocking her supply of pharmaceuticals. She watches popular movies from the 90s (ideally starring Harrison Ford or Whoopi Goldberg), and endures visits from her 鈥渂est friend鈥� Reva who drinks, worries about being skinny, makes herself vomit, and recites hollow-eyed feel-good self-help slogans.
This is the baffling premise on which My Year of Rest and Relaxation depends, and Moshfegh makes little effort to rationalize it. Instead, the novel records this process of self-creation鈥攚hat the narrator describes as her 鈥渉ibernation鈥濃€攚hich (at its most destructive) amounts to a total disavowal of the past, a kind of self-obliteration. Our narrator wants to slough off her past self like old dead skin, and re-emerge into the world more sharply herself. As a possibility, this effort is frightening, but鈥攁 little exhilarating too. The longing is that our narrator might pack herself into sleep so deeply and for so long that she can never unpack her (old) self again. After a year of 鈥渇eel[ing] nothing鈥 blank slate鈥� with 鈥渘o past or present,鈥� she might raise her head, look into the mirror, and find, reflected back, a completely altered self.
At its heart, this is a novel that reaches to the parts of ourselves that know what it means to live in a world that one does not want, and which one did not choose for themselves, and wanting out. My Year of Rest and Relaxation offers an anti-social way out of such a bind. Our narrator, who 鈥渉ate[s] talking to people,鈥� is desperate to express this essential loss to the world, a reprieve that neither friends nor lovers can provide. With no past to lean on or learn from, no future can be imagined, and with a present that is entirely occupied with 鈥渂lack emptiness, an infinite space of nothingness,鈥� our narrator鈥檚 acts of self-destruction grow and luxuriate unbearably. She does not attempt to reform or repair the broken pieces of her life, or exercise control over them, nor can she stop the past from reemerging. Scenes from her childhood interrupt her hibernation: a cold, unloving family, and later, a sleazy ex-lover and a ruptured intimacy with a friend she keeps hurting needlessly.
A quote from Toni Morrison鈥檚 novel, Sula, rose up from some shadowy recess of my mind when I was reading this book: 鈥淎nd like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.鈥� The novel鈥檚 narrator is an artist without an art form. Her relationship to art, in fact, is one of greatest disillusionment. In one memorable paragraph, our narrator makes an exact and frankly depressing observation about the state of art:
With no art form, no viable outlet for expressing her brokenness, our narrator鈥攊n her quest to escape her grief, to be cured of herself and be reborn鈥攕imply self-destructs.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation descends into dark places: Moshfegh explores the emotional wreckage of her narrator with a precision both touching and terrifying. There is a liberatory sort of shock to reading about a version of woman that is messy, porous, detestable, cruel, passive, and self-loathing; to transform the novel into a space where that woman is able to bleed and break apart, where she has permission to lose herself and not be wrong. It is that messy rawness of life that makes this novel not just provocative but persuasive as well, a novel that compels the reader into a riskier intimacy, caught up in the strange gravity of a narrator whose acts are both recklessly vulnerable and utterly unforgivable. It also, frankly, puts an unrepentantly horrible narrator in better charity with the reader.
Moshfegh also plays fast and loose with the novel鈥檚 traditional plot structure. In a novel of impasse and precarity, such infidelity to plot is required: it gives depth and form to the utter formlessness and trespass of grief. My Year of Rest and Relaxation emphasizes rupture and repetition rather than continuity. There is a sense of unreality to the passage of time in the story: time either moves in stuttering, lumpy pieces, like swimming through syrup, or strangely fast, with a lucidity more terrifying than the narrator鈥檚 drug-induced listlessness. It is as though the novel makes the point that time works differently when you鈥檙e grieving鈥攐r when you鈥檙e losing your mind.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation also, crucially, refuses our appetite for resolution. Although the novel ends with a sense of lightness and the spectral possibility of healing, it does not go from 鈥渂lack emptiness鈥� to an ecstatic, devotional appreciation of living. In Central Park, as our narrator watches 鈥渓ife buzz[ing] between each shade of green, from dark pines and supple ferns to lime green moss growing on a huge, dry gray rock,鈥� she tells us that 鈥淢y sleep had worked. I was soft and calm and felt things. This was good. This was my life now.鈥� Maybe her sleep did work. Or maybe it was the relief of knowing that, whether we are happy or not, the world simply goes on, in a way that predates all of us, and which will certainly outlive us.
It is hard to know what to make of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and its narrator. I inhaled the story in two quick sittings and found myself afterwards in something of a daze. My mind was spinning, a compass without a lodestone, and no matter how much I held up my feelings to the light, I could not decide if I were feeling bereft that it was over, or simply relieved.
The narrator of My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a rich, orphaned, conventionally beautiful WASP in her twenties who hopes to annihilate her past and emerge an improved version of herself by devoting an entire year to nothing but sleep. To ensure this transformation, she dopes herself up on prescription and over-the-counter drugs. In her waking hours, she makes regular visits to the street corner bodega, to the drug store, and less regular ones to Dr. Tuttle for the purpose of restocking her supply of pharmaceuticals. She watches popular movies from the 90s (ideally starring Harrison Ford or Whoopi Goldberg), and endures visits from her 鈥渂est friend鈥� Reva who drinks, worries about being skinny, makes herself vomit, and recites hollow-eyed feel-good self-help slogans.
This is the baffling premise on which My Year of Rest and Relaxation depends, and Moshfegh makes little effort to rationalize it. Instead, the novel records this process of self-creation鈥攚hat the narrator describes as her 鈥渉ibernation鈥濃€攚hich (at its most destructive) amounts to a total disavowal of the past, a kind of self-obliteration. Our narrator wants to slough off her past self like old dead skin, and re-emerge into the world more sharply herself. As a possibility, this effort is frightening, but鈥攁 little exhilarating too. The longing is that our narrator might pack herself into sleep so deeply and for so long that she can never unpack her (old) self again. After a year of 鈥渇eel[ing] nothing鈥 blank slate鈥� with 鈥渘o past or present,鈥� she might raise her head, look into the mirror, and find, reflected back, a completely altered self.
At its heart, this is a novel that reaches to the parts of ourselves that know what it means to live in a world that one does not want, and which one did not choose for themselves, and wanting out. My Year of Rest and Relaxation offers an anti-social way out of such a bind. Our narrator, who 鈥渉ate[s] talking to people,鈥� is desperate to express this essential loss to the world, a reprieve that neither friends nor lovers can provide. With no past to lean on or learn from, no future can be imagined, and with a present that is entirely occupied with 鈥渂lack emptiness, an infinite space of nothingness,鈥� our narrator鈥檚 acts of self-destruction grow and luxuriate unbearably. She does not attempt to reform or repair the broken pieces of her life, or exercise control over them, nor can she stop the past from reemerging. Scenes from her childhood interrupt her hibernation: a cold, unloving family, and later, a sleazy ex-lover and a ruptured intimacy with a friend she keeps hurting needlessly.
A quote from Toni Morrison鈥檚 novel, Sula, rose up from some shadowy recess of my mind when I was reading this book: 鈥淎nd like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.鈥� The novel鈥檚 narrator is an artist without an art form. Her relationship to art, in fact, is one of greatest disillusionment. In one memorable paragraph, our narrator makes an exact and frankly depressing observation about the state of art:
The art world had turned out to be like the stock market, a reflection of political trends and the persuasions of capitalism, fueled by greed and gossip and cocaine. I might as well have worked on Wall Street. Speculation and opinions drove not only the market but the products, sadly, the values of which were hinged not to the ineffable quality of art as a sacred human ritual鈥攁 value impossible to measure, anyway鈥攂ut to what a bunch of rich assholes thought would 鈥渆levate鈥� their portfolios and inspire jealousy and, delusional as they all were, respect. I was perfectly happy to wipe out all that garbage from my mind.
With no art form, no viable outlet for expressing her brokenness, our narrator鈥攊n her quest to escape her grief, to be cured of herself and be reborn鈥攕imply self-destructs.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation descends into dark places: Moshfegh explores the emotional wreckage of her narrator with a precision both touching and terrifying. There is a liberatory sort of shock to reading about a version of woman that is messy, porous, detestable, cruel, passive, and self-loathing; to transform the novel into a space where that woman is able to bleed and break apart, where she has permission to lose herself and not be wrong. It is that messy rawness of life that makes this novel not just provocative but persuasive as well, a novel that compels the reader into a riskier intimacy, caught up in the strange gravity of a narrator whose acts are both recklessly vulnerable and utterly unforgivable. It also, frankly, puts an unrepentantly horrible narrator in better charity with the reader.
Moshfegh also plays fast and loose with the novel鈥檚 traditional plot structure. In a novel of impasse and precarity, such infidelity to plot is required: it gives depth and form to the utter formlessness and trespass of grief. My Year of Rest and Relaxation emphasizes rupture and repetition rather than continuity. There is a sense of unreality to the passage of time in the story: time either moves in stuttering, lumpy pieces, like swimming through syrup, or strangely fast, with a lucidity more terrifying than the narrator鈥檚 drug-induced listlessness. It is as though the novel makes the point that time works differently when you鈥檙e grieving鈥攐r when you鈥檙e losing your mind.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation also, crucially, refuses our appetite for resolution. Although the novel ends with a sense of lightness and the spectral possibility of healing, it does not go from 鈥渂lack emptiness鈥� to an ecstatic, devotional appreciation of living. In Central Park, as our narrator watches 鈥渓ife buzz[ing] between each shade of green, from dark pines and supple ferns to lime green moss growing on a huge, dry gray rock,鈥� she tells us that 鈥淢y sleep had worked. I was soft and calm and felt things. This was good. This was my life now.鈥� Maybe her sleep did work. Or maybe it was the relief of knowing that, whether we are happy or not, the world simply goes on, in a way that predates all of us, and which will certainly outlive us.
May 30, 2019
Well, this one went down nice n' easy, like I imagine an Ambien would.
ADMISSION: I'm a little bit in love with this author, this woman who is often maligned for being gross and writing about nasty female characters, for being deliberately provocative relying solely on shock value, and oh don't forget, she's just plain unlikable. All of which makes me say: "SO WHAT?"
Ottessa Moshfegh does write about icky things people do, magnifies the cruel dark bits of life we would rather gloss over. If you need your literature to be overall pleasant and safe, clear of eye gunk and shit and pubic hair, I would give her a wide berth. And that's 100% okay - not every book is for every reader.
But if you're willing to read something dark and dangerous, to laugh at wicked, sardonic humour, to listen to a pitiless, confrontational story, then you are in luck. Plus, that cover. Isn't it fierce?
I felt at home when reading the words in this book. Life is hard! And sometimes many of us wish we could lay our head on the pillow and not wake up for a week or so, thereby avoiding the everyday struggle and banality. Our narrator is tired of her life. She wants to 'hibernate' for one year, and wake up a new person. Not literally a new person - technically she will be the same, but her hope is that she will awake with a brand new outlook. See, her parents died within a few months of each other, and losing them heightened the even more painful, everyday, life-long losses she endured in her family. So even though she's independently wealthy, beautiful and living in Manhattan in the year 2000, she'd rather close her eyes and pass the time in unconsciousness.
She's got an envious, try-hard friend in Reva. She's got Dr. Tuttle, a horrid psychiatrist who enables her pill-popping to the extreme. (Both of these characters are morbidly hilarious.) And she has Trevor, an on-again-off-again relationship that is more abusive than anything else.
Other than that, she's got her drugs, and a VCR with a bunch of Whoopi Goldberg movies.
The pages slide by, in a drugged haze. There's some repetition here: lots of taking pills, watching 80s movies, feeling confused about what might have happened during a blackout, or feeling frustrated at the lack of efficacy of the current chemical cocktail. Never though, did my interest wane. This is a character study expertly rendered. I was watching a person on the very edge of the world, sitting right on the edge, exceptionally alone in her ennui, light as air in her earthly impact. She might just float away, and no one would notice. I understood that existential feeling. And I wanted to know if she would be 'alright'.
Her drugged year ends just before 9/11, which is the most jarring wake-up call Moshfegh could summon.
I recognised a few similarities to - both protagonists are 24 year old females, drowning in insufferable inner worlds. Both are stories of escape, are ice picks to the heart, are dark as can be. Both feature addiction and characters with image issues and eating disorders. This one, though, is funnier, and, c'mon, even features a paragraph on Mickey Rourke in 9 1/2 Weeks.
This book asks the question of whether we can ever really escape pain. And is anyone ever 'alright'? Probably not, because there's so little we can control. But, confronting life with whatever it brings is the way to live in this world, even if it's jumping off a building. That's where freedom is: being wide, wide awake.
ADMISSION: I'm a little bit in love with this author, this woman who is often maligned for being gross and writing about nasty female characters, for being deliberately provocative relying solely on shock value, and oh don't forget, she's just plain unlikable. All of which makes me say: "SO WHAT?"
Ottessa Moshfegh does write about icky things people do, magnifies the cruel dark bits of life we would rather gloss over. If you need your literature to be overall pleasant and safe, clear of eye gunk and shit and pubic hair, I would give her a wide berth. And that's 100% okay - not every book is for every reader.
But if you're willing to read something dark and dangerous, to laugh at wicked, sardonic humour, to listen to a pitiless, confrontational story, then you are in luck. Plus, that cover. Isn't it fierce?
I felt at home when reading the words in this book. Life is hard! And sometimes many of us wish we could lay our head on the pillow and not wake up for a week or so, thereby avoiding the everyday struggle and banality. Our narrator is tired of her life. She wants to 'hibernate' for one year, and wake up a new person. Not literally a new person - technically she will be the same, but her hope is that she will awake with a brand new outlook. See, her parents died within a few months of each other, and losing them heightened the even more painful, everyday, life-long losses she endured in her family. So even though she's independently wealthy, beautiful and living in Manhattan in the year 2000, she'd rather close her eyes and pass the time in unconsciousness.
She's got an envious, try-hard friend in Reva. She's got Dr. Tuttle, a horrid psychiatrist who enables her pill-popping to the extreme. (Both of these characters are morbidly hilarious.) And she has Trevor, an on-again-off-again relationship that is more abusive than anything else.
Other than that, she's got her drugs, and a VCR with a bunch of Whoopi Goldberg movies.
The pages slide by, in a drugged haze. There's some repetition here: lots of taking pills, watching 80s movies, feeling confused about what might have happened during a blackout, or feeling frustrated at the lack of efficacy of the current chemical cocktail. Never though, did my interest wane. This is a character study expertly rendered. I was watching a person on the very edge of the world, sitting right on the edge, exceptionally alone in her ennui, light as air in her earthly impact. She might just float away, and no one would notice. I understood that existential feeling. And I wanted to know if she would be 'alright'.
Her drugged year ends just before 9/11, which is the most jarring wake-up call Moshfegh could summon.
I recognised a few similarities to - both protagonists are 24 year old females, drowning in insufferable inner worlds. Both are stories of escape, are ice picks to the heart, are dark as can be. Both feature addiction and characters with image issues and eating disorders. This one, though, is funnier, and, c'mon, even features a paragraph on Mickey Rourke in 9 1/2 Weeks.
This book asks the question of whether we can ever really escape pain. And is anyone ever 'alright'? Probably not, because there's so little we can control. But, confronting life with whatever it brings is the way to live in this world, even if it's jumping off a building. That's where freedom is: being wide, wide awake.
February 19, 2025
not to sound like i believe myself to the center of the universe, but...i am and i do and this book was probably written for me.
i, like our protagonist, am a 24-year-old blonde with exactly one toxic but adoring friend who daydreams about the idea of sleeping away a week / month / year and waking up refreshed and renewed and in a slightly different, shinier life.
in college, the aforementioned singular friend and i lived through finals and midterms and forty-hour workweeks combined with internships and full-time course-loads by fantasizing about comas. just a few weeks or so, no brain damage, modern-day snow whites escaping capitalism or the patriarchy or what have you.
all of this is to say that the only thing that separates me from this protagonist is the first two decades of the millennium and the wherewithal to get it done.
life is painful and exhausting and gross. life is stained crate & barrel couches and intolerable people with trust funds who can't tolerate themselves and caffeine addictions upheld by sh*tty coffee. life needs pills to get you through it and pills to get you out of it.
but life is also the in-betweens: waking up from blackouts (proverbial or literal) to full-body enjoy a slice of pizza standing in front of your fridge. feeling the sun on your skin at the end of winter. sitting in a park and watching people be happy. calling friends.
and life is knowing that the worst part of it all could be just around the corner, on the very last page. but the best part could come a few after.
and maybe the bad parts are actually the in-betweens of the happy ones.
that isn't what this book is about, but it's a fun side effect.
bottom line: this book is good.
reread update: want to note that a) i don't think that you're supposed to like this protagonist, god help me, and b) raising this to a 5, because this is not a perfect book (that ending...shudder) but it's close to it for me!
--------------
2nd reread
depressive episode reading
--------------
reread pre-review
i have almost no new insight.
still review & rating to come
--------------
reread update
doing the Bravest thing i can imagine: rereading this less than 3 weeks after i read it for the first time just so i can buddy read with lily (and also hopefully figure out a rating)
--------------
pre-review
how could i possibly be expected to sum up this book with a number between 1 and 5?
review & rating to come
--------------
tbr review
secretly i hope every book i pick up will turn out to be the kind of depressing, nasty, female-authored literary fiction populated by unlikable young women and Something to Say about the soullessness of late-stage capitalism that changes my internal monologue for 10-14 days and sears disturbing images into my brain.
i have a good feeling about this one.
i, like our protagonist, am a 24-year-old blonde with exactly one toxic but adoring friend who daydreams about the idea of sleeping away a week / month / year and waking up refreshed and renewed and in a slightly different, shinier life.
in college, the aforementioned singular friend and i lived through finals and midterms and forty-hour workweeks combined with internships and full-time course-loads by fantasizing about comas. just a few weeks or so, no brain damage, modern-day snow whites escaping capitalism or the patriarchy or what have you.
all of this is to say that the only thing that separates me from this protagonist is the first two decades of the millennium and the wherewithal to get it done.
life is painful and exhausting and gross. life is stained crate & barrel couches and intolerable people with trust funds who can't tolerate themselves and caffeine addictions upheld by sh*tty coffee. life needs pills to get you through it and pills to get you out of it.
but life is also the in-betweens: waking up from blackouts (proverbial or literal) to full-body enjoy a slice of pizza standing in front of your fridge. feeling the sun on your skin at the end of winter. sitting in a park and watching people be happy. calling friends.
and life is knowing that the worst part of it all could be just around the corner, on the very last page. but the best part could come a few after.
and maybe the bad parts are actually the in-betweens of the happy ones.
that isn't what this book is about, but it's a fun side effect.
bottom line: this book is good.
reread update: want to note that a) i don't think that you're supposed to like this protagonist, god help me, and b) raising this to a 5, because this is not a perfect book (that ending...shudder) but it's close to it for me!
--------------
2nd reread
depressive episode reading
--------------
reread pre-review
i have almost no new insight.
still review & rating to come
--------------
reread update
doing the Bravest thing i can imagine: rereading this less than 3 weeks after i read it for the first time just so i can buddy read with lily (and also hopefully figure out a rating)
--------------
pre-review
how could i possibly be expected to sum up this book with a number between 1 and 5?
review & rating to come
--------------
tbr review
secretly i hope every book i pick up will turn out to be the kind of depressing, nasty, female-authored literary fiction populated by unlikable young women and Something to Say about the soullessness of late-stage capitalism that changes my internal monologue for 10-14 days and sears disturbing images into my brain.
i have a good feeling about this one.
September 11, 2019
This is a very accurate depiction of depression鈥攜ou feel the main character鈥檚 monotony, the lethargy, the pointlessness of it all. As someone who copes with depression by sleeping an excessive amount, I understood where she was coming from, and picked up this book out of curiosity to see what happens when someone submits to that nihilistic desire to not associate with the world anymore. The relationship between the main character and her best friend provided an interesting look at both sides of unhappiness: one that is cynical and apathetic and succumbs to inactivity, and one that is shallow positivity to desperately cope with life. I thought this was a unique way of showing different types of depression and how they are alike and different at the same time.
Unfortunately, there were a lot of missed opportunities for the story to be more insightful and memorable beyond the exaggerated experiment of taking a mental health day. Many reviews complain that the main character is deplorable and annoyingly privileged, but I argue that was on purpose. The fault is more so that there wasn鈥檛 much done with this purposeful portrayal. I think showing more vulnerability to her character would have added more insight and humanity, especially since she was clearly grieving over her parents and projecting her self-hatred onto her best friend, but there was little payoff for these subplots. (I suppose the lack of payoff is realistic, but I wonder if that justifies a good 300-page novel.) The middle part drags, which makes the tonal shift and tacked-on conclusion towards the end, in contrast, feel too abrupt and heavy-handed.
Unfortunately, there were a lot of missed opportunities for the story to be more insightful and memorable beyond the exaggerated experiment of taking a mental health day. Many reviews complain that the main character is deplorable and annoyingly privileged, but I argue that was on purpose. The fault is more so that there wasn鈥檛 much done with this purposeful portrayal. I think showing more vulnerability to her character would have added more insight and humanity, especially since she was clearly grieving over her parents and projecting her self-hatred onto her best friend, but there was little payoff for these subplots. (I suppose the lack of payoff is realistic, but I wonder if that justifies a good 300-page novel.) The middle part drags, which makes the tonal shift and tacked-on conclusion towards the end, in contrast, feel too abrupt and heavy-handed.
March 24, 2022
This book is horrible. I am not one of those people who says "I just don't get it." I understand exactly what this book is trying to do. This books has no deep message nor is it a stroke of genius from its writer. It is a book about grief and depression, and how it brings out the worst in us, and how we want to escape from the world around us, but life is worth living and blah blah blah. Not only do I not like this book I also don't respect it. I don't respect its writing, its message , its plot or it's ending. This is not a good book. It is sudo intelligent. It makes a mockery fo its own subject matter and is insufferable to read. I know our narrator being insufferable is the point and if that works for you great. But in order for that to work for me I need a purpose and this books only purpose for that is grief and depression, so it feels hollow, flat, thin.
July 19, 2020
this was....something else.
this will probably always remain one of the oddest books i鈥檝e ever read. on the surface it is mostly ridiculous, the narrator deciding to just take a year in the hopes that it will transform her outlook on life. but underneath all that, it is kind of a tender and vulnerable look at a woman who is struggling to deal with her grief and depression and feels that drastic measures are the only way get through.
my only complaint is that things dragged throughout the middle just a bit, which in itself almost lent to the overall lethargy of the story, but the conclusion of the year was rushed (and wrapped up a little too neatly?) and i would have preferred a bit more time to have been focused there.
this will probably always remain one of the oddest books i鈥檝e ever read. on the surface it is mostly ridiculous, the narrator deciding to just take a year in the hopes that it will transform her outlook on life. but underneath all that, it is kind of a tender and vulnerable look at a woman who is struggling to deal with her grief and depression and feels that drastic measures are the only way get through.
my only complaint is that things dragged throughout the middle just a bit, which in itself almost lent to the overall lethargy of the story, but the conclusion of the year was rushed (and wrapped up a little too neatly?) and i would have preferred a bit more time to have been focused there.
February 25, 2022
it's rare to enjoy both the writing and the concept for a book and then totally hate the execution.
but i don't think that a self obsessed and sort of traumatized WASP giving catty commentary juxtaposed with the idea of sleeping for a year really worked. i certainly wanted it to, but this left me very empty. i think i'm too dumb to really "get" this kind of intellectualism.
but i don't think that a self obsessed and sort of traumatized WASP giving catty commentary juxtaposed with the idea of sleeping for a year really worked. i certainly wanted it to, but this left me very empty. i think i'm too dumb to really "get" this kind of intellectualism.
June 11, 2019
Listening to this book was like watching .
Occasionally funny and occasionally insightful in a limited, WASP-y kind of way, but mostly ridiculous, privileged, and, ultimately, pointless.
Occasionally funny and occasionally insightful in a limited, WASP-y kind of way, but mostly ridiculous, privileged, and, ultimately, pointless.
December 16, 2023
how the fuck was it so boring and so good at the same time????
December 15, 2021
validated my existence as a lazy whore
June 11, 2022
鈥淚 did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it.鈥�
I too would like to sleep for a year.
I too would like to sleep for a year.
October 17, 2021
this bitch really said let me sleep for one year because wtf is my life and i ate that shit up 馃槱
i love books with unlikeable characters, and this book served to say the least :) There is absolutely no one to root for, like no one and still this book managed to keep me hooked until the last page.
i love books with unlikeable characters, and this book served to say the least :) There is absolutely no one to root for, like no one and still this book managed to keep me hooked until the last page.
February 9, 2022
this is the catcher in the rye for hot women!!!!!!!!!!
July 23, 2018
*i received an ARC of this novel through a 欧宝娱乐 giveaway. which i suppose means final text is still subject to change but i wouldn't get my hopes up.
what a dreadful waste of words. i guess i'm glad the middle of the novel so sedated me in its banality that the utterly cheap 9/11 conclusion was merely offensive rather than absolutely enraging.
moshfegh is clearly a talented writer, and her entertaining wit sneaks through in moments throughout the novel. one only hopes that she will one day free her talents from the shackles of stereotypical MFA melodrama.
what a dreadful waste of words. i guess i'm glad the middle of the novel so sedated me in its banality that the utterly cheap 9/11 conclusion was merely offensive rather than absolutely enraging.
moshfegh is clearly a talented writer, and her entertaining wit sneaks through in moments throughout the novel. one only hopes that she will one day free her talents from the shackles of stereotypical MFA melodrama.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 8, 2020
Reading this felt like a chore.
November 2, 2023
Her job is sleep.
February 12, 2020
I was finally doing something that really mattered. Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart鈥攖his was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then鈥攖hat when I鈥檇 slept enough, I鈥檇 be okay. I鈥檇 be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation.
Whew! I had a surprising reaction to this novel. Ottessa Moshfegh鈥檚 My Year of Rest and Relaxation managed to catch me off guard and by surprise. Probably because 鈥� funny story 鈥� ironically, this book is about a character who does what I always say I鈥檇 like to do: have the ability to put my life on pause for just a few days to rest, to think, to recharge. Then press a magic button and the world resumes spinning, without me having lost a single second of my life. Wouldn鈥檛 that be wonderful! Well, here鈥檚 that idea with a twist: Little Miss Nameless Protagonist here does this for an entire year (while strung out on a myriad of different high-level drugs, all while juggling her semi-unwanted friendship with her best friend and her feelings about the death of her parents and the reality of her shitty boyfriend 鈥� really, he鈥檚 not even that). Set in the year 2000, our narrator decides to hibernate through a year of her life in an attempt to be a new person on the other side of that time. So, with the help of a zany and negligible psychiatrist who鈥檚 first and only line of doctoring is to pull out her prescription pad, our narrator dives deeper and deeper into the world of prescription drugs鈥攁nd the psychological effects of them鈥攊n her quest to sleep away a year of her life.
My Ambien, my Rozerem, my Ativan, my Xanax, my trazodone, my lithium. Seroquel, Lunesta. Valium. I laughed. I teared up. Finally, my heart slowed. My hands started trembling a little, or maybe they鈥檇 been trembling all along. 鈥淭hank God,鈥� I said aloud鈥 counted out three lithium, two Ativan, five Ambien. That sounded like a nice m茅lange, a luxurious free fall into velvet blackness. And a couple of trazodone because trazodone weighed down the Ambien, so if I dreamt, I鈥檇 dream low to the ground. That would be stabilizing, I thought. And maybe one more Ativan. Ativan to me felt like fresh air. A cool breeze, slightly effervescent. This was good, I thought. A serious rest. My mouth watered. Good strong American sleep.
Jacques Louis David鈥檚 neoclassical painting has been used as the cover, a reference to our protagonist鈥檚 鈥渃ulture,鈥� of which she is so proud and self-important, and her Art History background in college and before she quit the workforce. It鈥檚 a nice touch, offering layers of other meanings to this book. Within these pages you鈥檒l find a slew of wholly unlikeable characters 鈥� well, unlikeable by the arbitrary standards we tend to think of as what makes a 鈥渘ice鈥� or 鈥済ood鈥� person. You won鈥檛 find those people here. Instead you鈥檒l find the nameless narrator who knows she鈥檚 gorgeous and privileged and secretly loves the fact that her (bulimic, needy, whiny, having an intra-office affair with a married guy) best friend, Reva, is jealous of her. You鈥檒l find the WASP mother of the nameless protagonist who can鈥檛 be bothered to mother but instead calls in the nanny and drinks herself to death in the end. The artiste who made his claim to fame by ejaculating on a blank canvas in various colors. And we shan鈥檛 forget the 鈥渂oyfriend鈥� who uses our protagonist for quick sexual trysts that work out to only his benefit and then shuns her for weeks or months until he鈥檚 ready for another one. She has become semi-dependent on him and this cycle of abuse, even as she hopes that it will one day stop and that he鈥檒l choose her. Their relationship is twisted and not at all the storybook love affair you鈥檙e used to:
I called Trevor again. This time when he answered, I didn鈥檛 let him say a word. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e not over here fucking me in the next forty-five minutes then you can call an ambulance because I鈥檒l be here bleeding to death and I鈥檓 not gonna slit my wrists in the tub like a normal person. If you鈥檙e not here in forty-five minutes, I鈥檓 gonna slit my throat right here on the sofa. And in the meantime, I鈥檓 going to call my lawyer and tell him I鈥檓 leaving everything in the apartment to you, especially the sofa. So you can lean on Claudia or whoever when it comes time to deal with all that. She might know a good upholsterer.
I hear Moshfegh is a fan of writing about these sorts of characters 鈥� characters who need a chaser or two before they鈥檒l go down our throats smoothly. This was my first foray into her works, and I don鈥檛 mind that. In fact, that quality is what drew me deeper into this novel once I opened the first page. Moshfegh鈥檚 My Year of Rest and Relaxation doesn鈥檛 shy away from the murk and unpleasantness 鈥� really, downright offensiveness 鈥� inside of us all, that we鈥檙e all capable of. In fact, her characters here seem to revel in the way their ickiness makes them better than other people while simultaneously wallowing in it until it nearly drowns them. It鈥檚 a bold and scary line for an author to walk, and to see the characters on, but that鈥檚 what we love about writers who can pull it off. We all need that shiny mirror of our own spiny imperfections staring back at us from time to time, don鈥檛 we? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is dark and obnoxious, but I loved it. Because, isn鈥檛 life that way sometimes? I love characters with bite, maybe a pinch of cruelty in them 鈥�
--I appreciate the layers of characters who aren鈥檛 bow-tied in shiny pink ribbons of perfection, happy and grinning stupidly with their perfect teeth and empty heads. I like a character who is鈥hall I say, more like a real person, imperfections and all. Honestly, I felt like this book was WASPy done well 鈥� and I don鈥檛 think I鈥檝e eversaid that before. Even as she stood at the edge of reality, possibly even the precipice of her life, I was able to forget that her feeling of ennui with her privilege annoyed me. I wanted to reach out my hand to her, hoping she鈥檇 be okay:
But this novel鈥檚 ending is what sealed the deal for me, culminating with 9/11 shortly after our protagonist wakes from her year of sleep. The towers come down, someone she knows dies, and maybe 鈥� just maybe 鈥� that last line of the novel shows that our protagonist has finally found her humanity. I highly recommend this book to readers who like their characters straight with no chaser--to readers who don't shy away from some of the darker hues of humanity. If you're uncomfortable with that notion, definitely stay away! I was glued to this novel from start to finish, and that resonating ending easily solidified the strong 4 stars I鈥檓 offering up. ****
I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Penguin, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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Whew! I had a surprising reaction to this novel. Ottessa Moshfegh鈥檚 My Year of Rest and Relaxation managed to catch me off guard and by surprise. Probably because 鈥� funny story 鈥� ironically, this book is about a character who does what I always say I鈥檇 like to do: have the ability to put my life on pause for just a few days to rest, to think, to recharge. Then press a magic button and the world resumes spinning, without me having lost a single second of my life. Wouldn鈥檛 that be wonderful! Well, here鈥檚 that idea with a twist: Little Miss Nameless Protagonist here does this for an entire year (while strung out on a myriad of different high-level drugs, all while juggling her semi-unwanted friendship with her best friend and her feelings about the death of her parents and the reality of her shitty boyfriend 鈥� really, he鈥檚 not even that). Set in the year 2000, our narrator decides to hibernate through a year of her life in an attempt to be a new person on the other side of that time. So, with the help of a zany and negligible psychiatrist who鈥檚 first and only line of doctoring is to pull out her prescription pad, our narrator dives deeper and deeper into the world of prescription drugs鈥攁nd the psychological effects of them鈥攊n her quest to sleep away a year of her life.
My Ambien, my Rozerem, my Ativan, my Xanax, my trazodone, my lithium. Seroquel, Lunesta. Valium. I laughed. I teared up. Finally, my heart slowed. My hands started trembling a little, or maybe they鈥檇 been trembling all along. 鈥淭hank God,鈥� I said aloud鈥 counted out three lithium, two Ativan, five Ambien. That sounded like a nice m茅lange, a luxurious free fall into velvet blackness. And a couple of trazodone because trazodone weighed down the Ambien, so if I dreamt, I鈥檇 dream low to the ground. That would be stabilizing, I thought. And maybe one more Ativan. Ativan to me felt like fresh air. A cool breeze, slightly effervescent. This was good, I thought. A serious rest. My mouth watered. Good strong American sleep.
Jacques Louis David鈥檚 neoclassical painting has been used as the cover, a reference to our protagonist鈥檚 鈥渃ulture,鈥� of which she is so proud and self-important, and her Art History background in college and before she quit the workforce. It鈥檚 a nice touch, offering layers of other meanings to this book. Within these pages you鈥檒l find a slew of wholly unlikeable characters 鈥� well, unlikeable by the arbitrary standards we tend to think of as what makes a 鈥渘ice鈥� or 鈥済ood鈥� person. You won鈥檛 find those people here. Instead you鈥檒l find the nameless narrator who knows she鈥檚 gorgeous and privileged and secretly loves the fact that her (bulimic, needy, whiny, having an intra-office affair with a married guy) best friend, Reva, is jealous of her. You鈥檒l find the WASP mother of the nameless protagonist who can鈥檛 be bothered to mother but instead calls in the nanny and drinks herself to death in the end. The artiste who made his claim to fame by ejaculating on a blank canvas in various colors. And we shan鈥檛 forget the 鈥渂oyfriend鈥� who uses our protagonist for quick sexual trysts that work out to only his benefit and then shuns her for weeks or months until he鈥檚 ready for another one. She has become semi-dependent on him and this cycle of abuse, even as she hopes that it will one day stop and that he鈥檒l choose her. Their relationship is twisted and not at all the storybook love affair you鈥檙e used to:
I called Trevor again. This time when he answered, I didn鈥檛 let him say a word. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e not over here fucking me in the next forty-five minutes then you can call an ambulance because I鈥檒l be here bleeding to death and I鈥檓 not gonna slit my wrists in the tub like a normal person. If you鈥檙e not here in forty-five minutes, I鈥檓 gonna slit my throat right here on the sofa. And in the meantime, I鈥檓 going to call my lawyer and tell him I鈥檓 leaving everything in the apartment to you, especially the sofa. So you can lean on Claudia or whoever when it comes time to deal with all that. She might know a good upholsterer.
I hear Moshfegh is a fan of writing about these sorts of characters 鈥� characters who need a chaser or two before they鈥檒l go down our throats smoothly. This was my first foray into her works, and I don鈥檛 mind that. In fact, that quality is what drew me deeper into this novel once I opened the first page. Moshfegh鈥檚 My Year of Rest and Relaxation doesn鈥檛 shy away from the murk and unpleasantness 鈥� really, downright offensiveness 鈥� inside of us all, that we鈥檙e all capable of. In fact, her characters here seem to revel in the way their ickiness makes them better than other people while simultaneously wallowing in it until it nearly drowns them. It鈥檚 a bold and scary line for an author to walk, and to see the characters on, but that鈥檚 what we love about writers who can pull it off. We all need that shiny mirror of our own spiny imperfections staring back at us from time to time, don鈥檛 we? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is dark and obnoxious, but I loved it. Because, isn鈥檛 life that way sometimes? I love characters with bite, maybe a pinch of cruelty in them 鈥�
But did I care? I didn鈥檛 think so. If Reva鈥檚 body was hanging by the neck behind the bath curtain, I might have just gone home.
--I appreciate the layers of characters who aren鈥檛 bow-tied in shiny pink ribbons of perfection, happy and grinning stupidly with their perfect teeth and empty heads. I like a character who is鈥hall I say, more like a real person, imperfections and all. Honestly, I felt like this book was WASPy done well 鈥� and I don鈥檛 think I鈥檝e ever
I wondered if I might be dead, and I felt no sorrow, only worry over the afterlife, if it was going to be just like this, just as boring. If I鈥檓 dead, I thought, let this be the end. The silliness. At some point I got up to guzzle water from the tap in the kitchen. When I stood upright afterward, I started to go blind. The fluorescent lights were on overhead. The edges of my vision turned black. Like a cloud, the darkness came and rested in front of my eyes. I could move my eyes up and down, but the black cloud stayed fixed. Then it grew, widening. I buckled down to the kitchen floor and splayed out on the cold tile. I was going to sleep now, I hoped. I tried to surrender. But I would not sleep. My body refused. My heart shuddered. My breath caught. Maybe now is the moment, I thought: I could drop dead right now. Or now. Now. But my heart kept up its dull bang bang, thudding against my chest鈥�
But this novel鈥檚 ending is what sealed the deal for me, culminating with 9/11 shortly after our protagonist wakes from her year of sleep. The towers come down, someone she knows dies, and maybe 鈥� just maybe 鈥� that last line of the novel shows that our protagonist has finally found her humanity. I highly recommend this book to readers who like their characters straight with no chaser--to readers who don't shy away from some of the darker hues of humanity. If you're uncomfortable with that notion, definitely stay away! I was glued to this novel from start to finish, and that resonating ending easily solidified the strong 4 stars I鈥檓 offering up. ****
I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Penguin, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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September 2, 2021
A solid 3/5. This put me in a terrible slump and took me 3 weeks to finish (for reference, it normally takes me about a day to finish a book this size). I think that the beginning and end have loads of meaningful anecdotes about life and the female experience. It reminded me a lot of The Bell Jar but without the racism. I do have to say that I love reading about totally unlikable and unhinged women, but this book was not that enjoyable of a read for me; however, I believe that is the point. It is a book about a woman sleeping for a year, so naturally, it's going to be slow. My Year of Rest and Relaxation is deliberately boring, which is an interesting artistic choice, but I still don't feel that it was entirely worth the read. I am excited to see the movie, though.
January 7, 2022
This was so boring and absolutely no one was likable. I assumed I鈥檇 feel some sort of kindred spirit with a depressed woman who decided to sleep her life away, but there was simply no meaning to anything that happened. She was horrible to her best friend, and that had no meaning. She took a treasure trove of pills every day, and that had no meaning. She slept for 4 months, waking every three days to eat, and that had no meaning. I鈥檓 walking away from this having learned nothing about depression or anxiety or suicidal thoughts, in fact I don鈥檛 truly believe there鈥檚 any messaging in this book. It鈥檚 just about a mean woman who slept.
December 15, 2023
if i had to choose between 25 years in jail and reading this book again you can be sure that i鈥檒l be rotting in my cell
January 1, 2023
ur gonna have to wait for the video becausssseee鈥︹€�
August 2, 2020
鈥淥h, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.鈥�
I love to sleep! There鈥檚 nothing much better than a deliciously deep slumber without interruption. It鈥檚 also one of the most difficult of leisurely activities to come by. Perhaps that鈥檚 why when I lay my head down each night I hope that this will indeed be it 鈥� the most perfect sleep of all. I can鈥檛 tell you when I last experienced such a thing. If I had to guess, it would have been under anesthesia approximately fourteen years ago, and I suspect that doesn鈥檛 really count!
鈥淢y hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life.鈥�
When I first became aware of this novel, my curiosity was piqued but I didn鈥檛 really think it would be all that riveting. A woman attempts to take a year off from her life by ingesting a varied and absurd amount of pills in order to sleep the year away and wake up refreshed and renewed. Okay, but that sounds a bit boring. A woman sleeps for a year? What kind of entertainment could a reader possibly find in these pages? Then 2020 happened. What better time than now to languish in a drug-induced state for an entire year of your life? Yes, please! Exactly what remarkable cocktail of pills could do this for me?!
鈥淚鈥檓 not a junkie or something. I鈥檓 taking some time off. This is my year of rest and relaxation.鈥�
I was completely bowled over by this one! This novel was not a sedative 鈥� it was a stimulant, a wake-up call to get up and live your life! It was immensely entertaining 鈥� and smart! It seemed somewhat impertinent on my part to burst into laughter at random moments, but I suspect it was the author鈥檚 intent for the reader to do just that. Young, beautiful, financially secure, educated and cultured, Moshfegh鈥檚 protagonist seems to have everything going for her. But life in her upscale Manhattan apartment is vapid, pretentious and meaningless; or so she has concluded. Enter Dr. Tuttle, one of the most farcical caricatures you鈥檒l come across in literature. She鈥檚 the psychiatrist that will prescribe anything and everything under the sun. Here鈥檚 a bit of her 鈥渨isdom鈥� I can鈥檛 resist sharing:
鈥淎 lot of psychic diseases get passed around in confined public spaces. I sense your mind is too porous.鈥�
Dr. Tuttle takes the cake here for one of the zaniest, most memorable characters. Speaking of characters, there aren鈥檛 loads of them to get to know, for obvious reasons. If you spend most of your time indoors, sleeping, popping pills, and watching movies on VHS cassettes, you鈥檙e not going to bump into a whole lot of people. There is a 鈥榖est friend鈥� of sorts named Reva, who likes to drop in uninvited. She鈥檒l make you think a lot about your own friendships and what kind of meaning they really have. Is it possible that our closest friends envy us, despise us even? Yikes, I don鈥檛 even want to think about that. But you鈥檒l get to know what shallow means when you watch these two interact. Mostly everyone else is in the background. We see them through our unnamed narrator鈥檚 memories - her 鈥榦n and off鈥� boyfriend, her now deceased parents. Through these relationships you鈥檒l get a better idea of what makes this woman want to essentially reinvent herself.
I don鈥檛 want to spill the beans on any more of this story. I have to admit that I haven鈥檛 read something that had me turning the pages so quickly in quite some time. Ottessa Moshfegh is sharp and her voice is invigorating. Seems odd to say this about a plot revolving around sleeping for a year, but it is! It is dark and funny, and you just might want a good pair of muck boots if you tend to get a bit squeamish. Oh, and that ending 鈥� just brilliant, really!
鈥淚 counted the seconds passing. Time could go on forever like this, I thought again. Time would. Infinity loomed consistently and all at once, forever, with or without me.鈥�
I love to sleep! There鈥檚 nothing much better than a deliciously deep slumber without interruption. It鈥檚 also one of the most difficult of leisurely activities to come by. Perhaps that鈥檚 why when I lay my head down each night I hope that this will indeed be it 鈥� the most perfect sleep of all. I can鈥檛 tell you when I last experienced such a thing. If I had to guess, it would have been under anesthesia approximately fourteen years ago, and I suspect that doesn鈥檛 really count!
鈥淢y hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life.鈥�
When I first became aware of this novel, my curiosity was piqued but I didn鈥檛 really think it would be all that riveting. A woman attempts to take a year off from her life by ingesting a varied and absurd amount of pills in order to sleep the year away and wake up refreshed and renewed. Okay, but that sounds a bit boring. A woman sleeps for a year? What kind of entertainment could a reader possibly find in these pages? Then 2020 happened. What better time than now to languish in a drug-induced state for an entire year of your life? Yes, please! Exactly what remarkable cocktail of pills could do this for me?!
鈥淚鈥檓 not a junkie or something. I鈥檓 taking some time off. This is my year of rest and relaxation.鈥�
I was completely bowled over by this one! This novel was not a sedative 鈥� it was a stimulant, a wake-up call to get up and live your life! It was immensely entertaining 鈥� and smart! It seemed somewhat impertinent on my part to burst into laughter at random moments, but I suspect it was the author鈥檚 intent for the reader to do just that. Young, beautiful, financially secure, educated and cultured, Moshfegh鈥檚 protagonist seems to have everything going for her. But life in her upscale Manhattan apartment is vapid, pretentious and meaningless; or so she has concluded. Enter Dr. Tuttle, one of the most farcical caricatures you鈥檒l come across in literature. She鈥檚 the psychiatrist that will prescribe anything and everything under the sun. Here鈥檚 a bit of her 鈥渨isdom鈥� I can鈥檛 resist sharing:
鈥淎 lot of psychic diseases get passed around in confined public spaces. I sense your mind is too porous.鈥�
Dr. Tuttle takes the cake here for one of the zaniest, most memorable characters. Speaking of characters, there aren鈥檛 loads of them to get to know, for obvious reasons. If you spend most of your time indoors, sleeping, popping pills, and watching movies on VHS cassettes, you鈥檙e not going to bump into a whole lot of people. There is a 鈥榖est friend鈥� of sorts named Reva, who likes to drop in uninvited. She鈥檒l make you think a lot about your own friendships and what kind of meaning they really have. Is it possible that our closest friends envy us, despise us even? Yikes, I don鈥檛 even want to think about that. But you鈥檒l get to know what shallow means when you watch these two interact. Mostly everyone else is in the background. We see them through our unnamed narrator鈥檚 memories - her 鈥榦n and off鈥� boyfriend, her now deceased parents. Through these relationships you鈥檒l get a better idea of what makes this woman want to essentially reinvent herself.
I don鈥檛 want to spill the beans on any more of this story. I have to admit that I haven鈥檛 read something that had me turning the pages so quickly in quite some time. Ottessa Moshfegh is sharp and her voice is invigorating. Seems odd to say this about a plot revolving around sleeping for a year, but it is! It is dark and funny, and you just might want a good pair of muck boots if you tend to get a bit squeamish. Oh, and that ending 鈥� just brilliant, really!
鈥淚 counted the seconds passing. Time could go on forever like this, I thought again. Time would. Infinity loomed consistently and all at once, forever, with or without me.鈥�
July 28, 2018
Audiobook...read by Julia Whelan
Questions I had were:
鈥淎re there really psychiatrists this bad?鈥�
and who has friends like Reva?
My biggest question of all:
how would this funny ( ok, 鈥榯ragic鈥�-comic), but still laughable to me - fascinating fantasy- possibly end for our 鈥榞irl-in-hibernation鈥�? I was curious as hell.
I enjoyed the journey to the end too - the dialogue- the absurdity!
I鈥檓 thankful I never felt anxious or addicted to binge read this one. My breaks - were powerful. I was often still engaged thinking about the characters and their choices.
I鈥檇 love to know what inspired Ottessa to write it.
鈥淗ow would a REAL - FULL-YEAR-TIME-OUT transform - heal- and empower me?
Limited TV: (Whoopi Goldberg and Harrison Ford
were favorites for our narrator) ...
No social media - no crazy psychiatrist or friends like Reva coming over???
A full year to REST??
I could do without the drugs - thank you - but I鈥檇 get massages - and spend time in nature....
It鈥檚 a great fantasy- a year off to rest and relax.
I鈥檇 like to bring Paul with me though. 馃檪
Imagine .....NO MONEY CONCERNS - and a full year off the grid. How would you plan your year?
I stretched-out my reading weeks with Ottessa鈥檚 book - unlike when I listened to 鈥淓ileen鈥�...
I liked 鈥榯his鈥� book, too, just as much - they鈥檙e very different though. I didn鈥檛 feel the urgency to rush - in fact I held back - not because I didn鈥檛 enjoy it. I enjoyed it in small doses. Owning it allowed me the luxury to listen while taking as long as I wanted to finish it .....鈥榬esting & relaxing鈥�.
Soaking in the warm pool while listening to this audiobook was decadent and definitely relaxing!!!!
A full 5 stars from me....
I鈥檓 clear it wouldn鈥檛 be everyone鈥檚 cup of tea ... but in a strange way- it comforted me.
Questions I had were:
鈥淎re there really psychiatrists this bad?鈥�
and who has friends like Reva?
My biggest question of all:
how would this funny ( ok, 鈥榯ragic鈥�-comic), but still laughable to me - fascinating fantasy- possibly end for our 鈥榞irl-in-hibernation鈥�? I was curious as hell.
I enjoyed the journey to the end too - the dialogue- the absurdity!
I鈥檓 thankful I never felt anxious or addicted to binge read this one. My breaks - were powerful. I was often still engaged thinking about the characters and their choices.
I鈥檇 love to know what inspired Ottessa to write it.
鈥淗ow would a REAL - FULL-YEAR-TIME-OUT transform - heal- and empower me?
Limited TV: (Whoopi Goldberg and Harrison Ford
were favorites for our narrator) ...
No social media - no crazy psychiatrist or friends like Reva coming over???
A full year to REST??
I could do without the drugs - thank you - but I鈥檇 get massages - and spend time in nature....
It鈥檚 a great fantasy- a year off to rest and relax.
I鈥檇 like to bring Paul with me though. 馃檪
Imagine .....NO MONEY CONCERNS - and a full year off the grid. How would you plan your year?
I stretched-out my reading weeks with Ottessa鈥檚 book - unlike when I listened to 鈥淓ileen鈥�...
I liked 鈥榯his鈥� book, too, just as much - they鈥檙e very different though. I didn鈥檛 feel the urgency to rush - in fact I held back - not because I didn鈥檛 enjoy it. I enjoyed it in small doses. Owning it allowed me the luxury to listen while taking as long as I wanted to finish it .....鈥榬esting & relaxing鈥�.
Soaking in the warm pool while listening to this audiobook was decadent and definitely relaxing!!!!
A full 5 stars from me....
I鈥檓 clear it wouldn鈥檛 be everyone鈥檚 cup of tea ... but in a strange way- it comforted me.
March 22, 2025
Reassured me that being a lazy whore is both a lifestyle and a calling.
October 2, 2021
|| || || ||
The reviews of this book are hilarious. Half of them appear to be taking this book at face value, and the other half seem to be trying to come across as if they are op-eds for The New Yorker. MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION is a polarizing book, and whether you'll like it depends on how you feel about reading depressing books with unlikable characters. If you want escapism and "soft" and "gentle" reads and joy, this book is going to go down about as well as, well, a dose of infermiterol.
MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION is set in pre-9/11/2001 New York. The heroine is young, thin, beautiful, privileged, independently wealthy - and clinically depressed. She engages in a number of toxic behaviors, dating a user, befriending another woman who has an eating disorder and with whom she engages a highly co-dependent relationship, and spending all of her free time in bed or on her couch, watching old movies while taking drugs to "hibernate" and escape the uncomfortable intensity of her own emotions.
The narrator is jaded, selfish, and emotionally dulled. The portrayal of depression here is actually quite well done. People who have never experienced depression seem to think that it makes you cry and whine all the time (and, perhaps most unforgivably, willfully self-indulgent and done with agency), but for many people, there's a numbness and a feeling of hopelessness and despair: "What's the point?" you might ask, if nothing brings you joy and contentment, and you don't have the energy to do anything but sleep and eat and exist. When you're depressed, living isn't about enjoying the small things; it's about trying to muster up the energy to do the small things when you barely have the energy to get out of bed. Even though the heroine comes off as privileged, she is unable to enjoy any of the luxuries she has; the only solace she has in life is the escapism that comes from "dreamless" sleep. So what does she do? She engages a quack psychiatrist to feed her pill habit.
The psychiatrist is probably one of the most unlikable characters in the book (although the boyfriend, Trevor, is awful, too - having sex with your drugged-out unconscious ex? Yeah, buddy, that's rape). Dr. Tuttle is a crazy cat lady who has sessions in her nightgown and gives away free pill samples like they're fun-sized candy bars and it's Halloween. Some of the NYT-wannabe set were talking about this book being an existential satire, only I'm not sure what, exactly, MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION is trying to parody. Is Moshfegh trying to go the MODEST PROPOSAL route in the vein of Johnathan Swift, suggesting that if #FirstWorldProblems sufferers want to use intoxication the way the population of Brave New World did with soma to escape from reality, then why not physically escape from reality by drugging yourself out and going into a coma-like hibernation state? The ending kind of suggests that, as if life itself is a dream and death is the awakening.
I found this book amusing and bemusing in equal parts. For most of it, I took the book at face value, as a depiction of depression that transcends class and circumstance. The heroine has a life that many would kill for - minus her dead parents - and has every opportunity in the world at her manicured fingertips, but because of her psychological state, it still isn't enough. That, I appreciated, because it's true that people can be depressed no matter how "happy" their life seems, and while depression is totally worse for people who don't have the resources or the safety net that a caring group of family and friends affords, that doesn't mean that being privileged means that you feel any less helpless.
It becomes harder to take this book at face value with the introduction of the walking malpractice suit that is Dr. Tuttle, the enabling solution she finds with avant-garde artist, Ping Xi, and the pill cocktails she takes on a daily basis that seem as though they should be causing some kind of physical harm or side-effects, especially since she mixes them with caffeine and alcohol. The human body is resilient, but not that resilient. I also disliked the ending, as I'm sure many of the people who rated this book so low did, as it feels like suicidal ideation. Here we have this character who describes their self-damaging behaviors as "saving herself," and when she witnesses death being committed with agency, she describes it as being awake; as if death was the solution to her problems all along.
MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION isn't a bad book, and both the accolades and the criticisms are well-deserved, for various reasons. I fall in the middle here, because while I liked the book and found it interesting enough to continue, I didn't really like the end goal and I'm not sure what exactly the author was trying to accomplish with her message (if anything? maybe it was just a character study or an exercise in trolling the audience, and Ottessa Moshfegh is leaning back against the giant pile of money she got as an advance for this book and laughing at us all).
If you're depressed, you should probably avoid this book, as it will be triggering. It also deals with eating disorders, pharmacological abuse, suicide, addiction, and death. I'd read more from this author, but I wouldn't reread MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION. It's a pretty miserable experience, even if it has some sharply cutting observation on the foibles and hypocrisies of humankind.
3 stars
May 11, 2022
Ottessa Moshfegh seems to be completely incapable of producing works that aren't masterpieces.
January 27, 2025
The only good part about this book was the way it hooked me from the very first page until the very end.
Did I enjoy the book? No, but I read it till the end. Pure writing talent I would say to this because鈥�.
1. I hated all the characters especially the narcissistic, compulsive liar who poked fun of mental health issues, communal stereotyping, manipulative self destructive main character (the narrator of course!)
2. What鈥檚 the point of this book other than we could all relate to the character on some of our 鈥業 don鈥檛 care鈥� moments of our lives?
3. Just not worth the hype. I just cannot believe I wasted two whole days reading this book. Again, pure genius with the writing even when I hated everything else about the book.
One thing for sure I am glad though is that I didn鈥檛 buy the book.
(This sounds like my book. The cover is depressing but that's okay. The heart wants what it wants.) Now this was before I actually read the book.
Did I enjoy the book? No, but I read it till the end. Pure writing talent I would say to this because鈥�.
1. I hated all the characters especially the narcissistic, compulsive liar who poked fun of mental health issues, communal stereotyping, manipulative self destructive main character (the narrator of course!)
2. What鈥檚 the point of this book other than we could all relate to the character on some of our 鈥業 don鈥檛 care鈥� moments of our lives?
3. Just not worth the hype. I just cannot believe I wasted two whole days reading this book. Again, pure genius with the writing even when I hated everything else about the book.
One thing for sure I am glad though is that I didn鈥檛 buy the book.
(This sounds like my book. The cover is depressing but that's okay. The heart wants what it wants.) Now this was before I actually read the book.
May 15, 2018
Review from
Someone standing in line with Otessa Moshfegh at a Starbucks must have said aloud 鈥淚鈥檓 not sure there鈥檚 a novel that sufficiently embraces apathy brought about by woeful depression,鈥� and Otessa said, 鈥淗old my latte.鈥� If that鈥檚 not a factual depiction of how this novel was conceived, then my new favorite author Ms. Moshfegh herself can come correct me. I wouldn鈥檛 mind.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a unique twist on the classic metamorphosis tale. Written to take place in the year 2000-2001, it鈥檚 a novel based heavily in our transition from 1990鈥檚 affluence and innocence and relative ease, into the early 2000鈥檚 height of terrorism and anxiety. Our narrator, nameless, lifeless, thin, beautiful, rich, orphaned, plans on spending a year in hibernation to sleep away her emotions, wrapped up in a cocoon of colorful pharmaceutical helpers. She finds herself a quack psychiatrist, Dr. Tuttle (hilariously rife with terrible advice), to prescribe her every sleep aid on the market. She takes her apathy in extreme doses, a perfect prescription for a privileged white female in the midst of a foggy depression. Our narrator is as completely disinterested with herself as she is in the rest of the world, which impresses me in a way I can鈥檛 put my finger on. I鈥檝e rarely come across a character in literary fiction so uninterested in themselves.
Juxtaposed with our narrator is her best friend from college, the sweet and try-hard Reva. Desperate to fit in, bulimic, chasing trends and having affairs with bosses, Reva is the stereotypical antithesis to our apathetic heroine. She issues Oprah-book-club axioms and sophomoric attempts at psychoanalysis, trying to establish a connection with our narrator, to no avail. In the end, her frantic running around attempting to change herself is just as ineffectual as the narrator鈥檚 standing still.
The plot, or lack thereof, rides a strange dream-like quality of repetition and haziness. Our narrator begins to black out and do things without her waking knowledge; she throws parties, goes on shopping binges, duct tapes her phone to odd places, harasses her old boyfriends, etc. Her black outs last for days and leave her totally bemused as to what she鈥檚 done. In a particularly active black out, she befriends an artist named Ping Xi who finds her mission fascinating and wants to use her as a muse. Our narrator only wants to sleep. Her observation of the outside world, and everyone dialed into it, is scathing.
I鈥檒l hold off describing our narrator鈥檚 estranged relationship with her emotionally distant father and her cold, cruel mother. It becomes a pivotal point driving her addiction to avoidance. She does eventually emerge from her chrysalis of sleep, but the novel鈥檚 ending leaves much to be desired. It鈥檚 bittersweet鈥攁nticlimactic and effective, all at once. Just like this whole novel.
Memorable Quotes:
鈥淓ducation is directly proportional to anxiety.鈥�
鈥淭his was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I鈥檇 disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was my dream.鈥�
鈥淚 felt myself float up and away, higher and higher into the ether until my body was just an anecdote, a symbol, a portrait hanging in another world.鈥�
鈥淏ut these painters of fruit thought only of their own mortality, as though the beauty of their work would somehow soothe their fear of death. There they all were, hanging feckless and candid and meaningless, paintings of things, objects, the paintings themselves just things, objects, withering toward their own inevitable demise.鈥�
Thanks to NetGalley for my pre-pub copy for an unbiased review.
Someone standing in line with Otessa Moshfegh at a Starbucks must have said aloud 鈥淚鈥檓 not sure there鈥檚 a novel that sufficiently embraces apathy brought about by woeful depression,鈥� and Otessa said, 鈥淗old my latte.鈥� If that鈥檚 not a factual depiction of how this novel was conceived, then my new favorite author Ms. Moshfegh herself can come correct me. I wouldn鈥檛 mind.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a unique twist on the classic metamorphosis tale. Written to take place in the year 2000-2001, it鈥檚 a novel based heavily in our transition from 1990鈥檚 affluence and innocence and relative ease, into the early 2000鈥檚 height of terrorism and anxiety. Our narrator, nameless, lifeless, thin, beautiful, rich, orphaned, plans on spending a year in hibernation to sleep away her emotions, wrapped up in a cocoon of colorful pharmaceutical helpers. She finds herself a quack psychiatrist, Dr. Tuttle (hilariously rife with terrible advice), to prescribe her every sleep aid on the market. She takes her apathy in extreme doses, a perfect prescription for a privileged white female in the midst of a foggy depression. Our narrator is as completely disinterested with herself as she is in the rest of the world, which impresses me in a way I can鈥檛 put my finger on. I鈥檝e rarely come across a character in literary fiction so uninterested in themselves.
Juxtaposed with our narrator is her best friend from college, the sweet and try-hard Reva. Desperate to fit in, bulimic, chasing trends and having affairs with bosses, Reva is the stereotypical antithesis to our apathetic heroine. She issues Oprah-book-club axioms and sophomoric attempts at psychoanalysis, trying to establish a connection with our narrator, to no avail. In the end, her frantic running around attempting to change herself is just as ineffectual as the narrator鈥檚 standing still.
The plot, or lack thereof, rides a strange dream-like quality of repetition and haziness. Our narrator begins to black out and do things without her waking knowledge; she throws parties, goes on shopping binges, duct tapes her phone to odd places, harasses her old boyfriends, etc. Her black outs last for days and leave her totally bemused as to what she鈥檚 done. In a particularly active black out, she befriends an artist named Ping Xi who finds her mission fascinating and wants to use her as a muse. Our narrator only wants to sleep. Her observation of the outside world, and everyone dialed into it, is scathing.
I鈥檒l hold off describing our narrator鈥檚 estranged relationship with her emotionally distant father and her cold, cruel mother. It becomes a pivotal point driving her addiction to avoidance. She does eventually emerge from her chrysalis of sleep, but the novel鈥檚 ending leaves much to be desired. It鈥檚 bittersweet鈥攁nticlimactic and effective, all at once. Just like this whole novel.
Memorable Quotes:
鈥淓ducation is directly proportional to anxiety.鈥�
鈥淭his was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I鈥檇 disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was my dream.鈥�
鈥淚 felt myself float up and away, higher and higher into the ether until my body was just an anecdote, a symbol, a portrait hanging in another world.鈥�
鈥淏ut these painters of fruit thought only of their own mortality, as though the beauty of their work would somehow soothe their fear of death. There they all were, hanging feckless and candid and meaningless, paintings of things, objects, the paintings themselves just things, objects, withering toward their own inevitable demise.鈥�
Thanks to NetGalley for my pre-pub copy for an unbiased review.
August 17, 2019
FIVE SARDONIC STARS
My repeated claim to love unlikable characters is put to the test in this darkly irreverent, strange fable. I鈥檓 sticking to my claim. I do love most of the unlikable people in . Humor goes a long way when writing unpleasant characters! The author is sophisticated and brilliant when it comes to injecting absurdly wry observations on both the glitter and the grime of New York City.
Contrary to the lovely 18th century painting of a leisurely young woman gracing the cover, this novel is set in 2000 and 2001. Women have had 鈥渇ainting spells鈥� for centuries now and the remedy is usually a good lie-in. Sleep is restorative. Beautiful and necessary for good health. This is all our never-named protagonist wants in life. Sleep. Our Sleeping Beauty makes a conscious decision to slumber for one year.
鈥淚 can鈥檛 point to any one event that resulted in my decision to go into hibernation,鈥� the narrator tells us. 鈥淚 thought life would be more tolerable if my brain were slower to condemn the world around me.鈥�
The combination of apathetic, glitzy beauty and horror is a prevalent theme in . The best comparative books I鈥檝e come up with are: , and a little bit What a combo, huh?
The obvious timeline will lead you to the impending ending, you know we are headed for 9/11 territory. In a lesser writer鈥檚 hands, this would be off-putting and cliched. Moshfegh uses it to dazzling irony and, you better believe, I was stunned into a silent reflection that so few contemporary novels are able to achieve.
Just reading about our never-named character craving sleep all the time, seduced my own mind and I could often hear my pillow calling my name while listening to this perfectly narrated audiobook (Julia Whelan-is the goddess of audio acting!). That鈥檚 not to imply the book is in any way boring, many parts are unquestionably disturbing. Our girl secures the worst shrink in history and is given pharmaceuticals by the handfuls. She has some of the most sickening, vulgar nightmares which are described in horrifying detail.
She endures the nightmares and blackouts as the preferred alternative to her awakened existence. What is she hiding from? Why why why? You will get the answers in this dreamily paced, viciously witty story. You may not like the answers, but Moshfegh doesn't care. She is the one simply holding the mirror.
Just like the main character, the novel is vacuous, yet complicated. Blank, yet layered. A spectacularly detached anti-drama. I really love it, but it may not be your cup of tea. BREAKING NEWS: The fabulous Margot Robbie has just optioned the film rights鈥攕he would be perfectly cast as our never-named, disturbed Sleeping Beauty!馃挆
My repeated claim to love unlikable characters is put to the test in this darkly irreverent, strange fable. I鈥檓 sticking to my claim. I do love most of the unlikable people in . Humor goes a long way when writing unpleasant characters! The author is sophisticated and brilliant when it comes to injecting absurdly wry observations on both the glitter and the grime of New York City.
Contrary to the lovely 18th century painting of a leisurely young woman gracing the cover, this novel is set in 2000 and 2001. Women have had 鈥渇ainting spells鈥� for centuries now and the remedy is usually a good lie-in. Sleep is restorative. Beautiful and necessary for good health. This is all our never-named protagonist wants in life. Sleep. Our Sleeping Beauty makes a conscious decision to slumber for one year.
鈥淚 can鈥檛 point to any one event that resulted in my decision to go into hibernation,鈥� the narrator tells us. 鈥淚 thought life would be more tolerable if my brain were slower to condemn the world around me.鈥�
The combination of apathetic, glitzy beauty and horror is a prevalent theme in . The best comparative books I鈥檝e come up with are: , and a little bit What a combo, huh?
The obvious timeline will lead you to the impending ending, you know we are headed for 9/11 territory. In a lesser writer鈥檚 hands, this would be off-putting and cliched. Moshfegh uses it to dazzling irony and, you better believe, I was stunned into a silent reflection that so few contemporary novels are able to achieve.
Just reading about our never-named character craving sleep all the time, seduced my own mind and I could often hear my pillow calling my name while listening to this perfectly narrated audiobook (Julia Whelan-is the goddess of audio acting!). That鈥檚 not to imply the book is in any way boring, many parts are unquestionably disturbing. Our girl secures the worst shrink in history and is given pharmaceuticals by the handfuls. She has some of the most sickening, vulgar nightmares which are described in horrifying detail.
She endures the nightmares and blackouts as the preferred alternative to her awakened existence. What is she hiding from? Why why why? You will get the answers in this dreamily paced, viciously witty story. You may not like the answers, but Moshfegh doesn't care. She is the one simply holding the mirror.
Just like the main character, the novel is vacuous, yet complicated. Blank, yet layered. A spectacularly detached anti-drama. I really love it, but it may not be your cup of tea. BREAKING NEWS: The fabulous Margot Robbie has just optioned the film rights鈥攕he would be perfectly cast as our never-named, disturbed Sleeping Beauty!馃挆
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