MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION by Ottessa Moshfegh
★★★★☆
Penguin Press, July 2018
This book was a weird and offbeat delight. My Year of Rest and Relaxation is exactly what its title advertises – our unnamed narrator decides that all she wants out of life is to sleep for a year straight. But not just 8 hour a night sleep – she wants to pass an entire year mostly unconscious, which she attempts to achieve with the help of a cocktail of pharmaceuticals prescribed by the least qualified psychiatrist of all time who she happened to find in the yellow pages.
I’m having a hard time putting my finger on what it is I liked so much about this book, when the interesting thing about it is that it makes no effort whatsoever to be likable. The narrator is a selfish twenty-something with no sense of responsibility toward anything or anyone in her life. The circumstances of her life are probably difficult for most readers to relate to – she’s rich, she’s thin, she’s pretty, she lives in the Upper East Side in an apartment paid for by her inheritance – and she neither needs nor wants our pity. But at the same time, this candid and frank style has its own kind of charm and dark humor (it reminded me a bit of The Idiot in tone), and I found the overall effect to be both intriguing and a bit unsettling.
And, as with all good unlikable protagonists, there’s definitely more to our narrator than she wants us to see. Her (borderline?) abusive relationship with her now dead parents certainly plays into the fact that she holds everyone – including us, including herself – at an arm’s length. She resists accessing her emotions to such an extent that at first you wonder if she might actually be heartless, but throughout the book you start to notice certain cracks in her carefully constructed facade. She tells the reader ad nauseum that she doesn’t care about her friend Reva, but this statement is occasionally belied by her actions especially under the influence of drugs. It’s an interesting look at repression as a coping mechanism, as well as the lengths we’re willing to go to to avoid the things we don’t want to face.
Ironically, while the narrator’s goal is laid out plainly from the first page – she wants to sleep for a year – Moshfegh’s agenda with this novel is much more opaque. I will gladly admit to thinking on more than one occasion “I don’t get it, I don’t get what Moghfegh is trying to achieve with this.” Because this book is just what it says on the tin: it’s about a girl taking a lot of drugs and sleeping for a year. But even through those moments of doubt, I was engrossed. Moshfegh’s prose is effortlessly engaging, and her rather unconventional exploration of mental health and ennui just really struck a chord with me. And the final page is like an emotional gut-punch. Having read this, I have a very good idea of why Ottessa Moshfegh seems to be such a polarizing writer, but if the rest of her books are this intriguing, I’m officially hooked.
You had me at ‘weird and offbeat’. I added this to my TBR earlier today, in fact, and now I’m all the more excited to give it a go.
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It was SO odd and also oddly compelling. I hope you enjoy it!
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Oooo the review I’ve been waiting for! Love that you loved this, can’t wait to read it myself! And beyond glad that you found it similar to THE IDIOT!! The longer I spend away from that book, the more I miss it! Great review as always Rachel. 🙂
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I can’t wait to hear your reaction! I guess it’s also similar to The Idiot in that it’s super divisive but I knew within minutes of reading that I was going to love it. Ahhh that’s exactly how I feel too, recently I went back to my review of The Idiot and changed it from 4 stars to 5 because the more I think about it the more I love it.
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With THE IDIOT, at first I was like,”well that was a good book,” and now I’m like, “this is one of my favorite books of the year,” so my love for it came with time, like you. Hopefully it’s a similar experience with Moshfegh’s!
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Same here!! It was realizing that it would make it onto a hypothetical ‘best books of the year so far’ list that made me change my rating from 4 to 5. It was so excellent.
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Nicely done review. I also enjoy this author. She always keeps her readers on their toes.
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Thanks! This was my first Moshfegh but I can’t wait to read more by her.
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You haven’t read Eileen yet? You must. And I must read this one!
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I know, such an embarrassing gap in my contemporary fiction. But it’s definitely toward the top of the list now!
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I am so intrigued by this. I tried reading her short story collection but couldn’t get on with it. But this review definitely makes me want to give her writing another chance!
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This was my first Moshfegh so I can’t comment on how it compares to her other works but I just really loved it! I’d say it’s worth a try though especially as it’s very short and a quick read, so not a huge time commitment if you do end up disliking it.
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Fab review! This doesn’t particularly sound like my kind of book but your review has definitely made me intrigued nonetheless. Great review as always Rachel!
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Thanks so much! I don’t think it would be your kind of book either, lol! But I always enjoy reading reviews of books I have no intention of reading so I totally get that!
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I am so glad you loved this. As I’ve said earlier this week, I really need to get to her books. Because I do think I’d adore them.
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I think you would too! I can’t wait to hear your thoughts. I really need to pick up Eileen soon, I’m officially hooked.
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This sounds weirdly interesting! Maybe because I also just love sleeping A LOT, I think I would like this book 🙂
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I know right?! I was immediately like ‘ok this is super weird but this is also the most relatable premise of all time.’
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I am incredibly intrigued by this and can’t wait to give it a try. It sounds so weird and a bit unsettling. Excellent review!
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Weird and unsettling are perfect words for it. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
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I’m so intrigued 👀
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You should be 👀
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I’ve been excited to see your thoughts on this and it sounds VERY good and I am VERY much definitely going to read it.
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YES cannot wait to hear your thoughts!
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