My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Author: Otessa Moshfegh
Published by: Vintage
Pages: 289
Format: Paperback
My Rating ★★★★
Published by: Vintage
Pages: 289
Format: Paperback
My Rating ★★★★
Young, thin, pretty, and a recent Columbia graduate, an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for by her inheritance: our narrator has many of the advantages of life. But there is a vacuum at the heart of things, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents. Or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her. Or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend.
In the year 2000 in the world’s greatest city, aglitter with wealth and possibility.
What could be so terribly wrong?
My thoughts:
Ottessa Moshfegh’s much-hyped novel is a fragile, smart, weird and totally compelling portrayal of a twenty-something art history graduate who is exhausted with the world. I read it and was entranced.
Young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. Yet she longs to lose herself completely.
Feeling she’s found the perfect solution; she decides to take a year under sedation to relax and hide away from the world. Induced by an increasingly surreal cocktail of prescription drugs, the story follows this rich young white woman in New York City at the turn of the millennium. This unnamed heroine of Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel is wealthy, fit, well-educated and chic, yet she has become so tired of existence that she decides to take as many drugs as possible, aiming to simply sleep life away.
She embarks on her journey to sleep for an entire year, hoping to be "rebirthed" into someone completely new. We hear her thoughts in her waking hours, as well as her memories from the past, building up a sense of her questionable character and backstory. Despite how unlikable she is, our narrator’s story resonates in the era of a mental health crisis. She plays both patient and psychologist, deciding what will heal her, entirely unaided by professional help as her psychiatrist is out of the picture due to the narrator’s constant lies.
The narrator repeatedly makes very sharp – although often cruel – observations about other people. She’s experienced loss and rejection throughout her life.
Whilst the plot may seem a little superficial, the storyline surrounds the mental health issues that the narrator and her friend Reva are facing. The book is peopled by unsympathetic characters but surprisingly I realised I wanted to spend time with them, even if the unnamed ‘heroine’ sleeps through much of the story. Her story is so raw. There’s nothing romanticised here, the narrator is realistic and honest, and depression is displayed openly throughout the novel. You can really feel the main character’s monotony, the lethargy, the pointlessness of it all.
Interestingly, the book operates under the premise that the reader knows 9/11 is approaching. As for the effect of the looming impact of 9/11 on the book, it completely colours the mood and tone. In the context of the narrator’s avoidance of the news, here, finally, will be something of such magnitude that she cannot ignore it.Moshfegh’s writing is continuously compelling, her storytelling cool, strange, aloof, and disciplined. The entire book is somewhat bizarre but strangely addictive. It is a little repetitive at times but that is the reality of the narrator’s life as she attempts to sleep away a full year.
A wonderful novel full of the darkest of black comedy, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is unlike anything I’ve read before.
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 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 to get through. It is complex and addictive, touching on triggering topics and a character who is neither relatable nor likeable. However, through her unique voice, Moshfegh reels you into her world and won’t let go. There is absolutely no one to root for, truly no one and still this book managed to keep me hooked until the last page.
Reading the story of this spoiled, troubled socialite living out an experience that is both horribly destructive and economically unfeasible kept me entertained from start to finish.
Overall reaction:
Ottessa Moshfegh’s much-hyped novel is a fragile, smart, weird and totally compelling portrayal of a twenty-something art history graduate who is exhausted with the world. I read it and was entranced.
Young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. Yet she longs to lose herself completely.
Feeling she’s found the perfect solution; she decides to take a year under sedation to relax and hide away from the world. Induced by an increasingly surreal cocktail of prescription drugs, the story follows this rich young white woman in New York City at the turn of the millennium. This unnamed heroine of Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel is wealthy, fit, well-educated and chic, yet she has become so tired of existence that she decides to take as many drugs as possible, aiming to simply sleep life away.
She embarks on her journey to sleep for an entire year, hoping to be "rebirthed" into someone completely new. We hear her thoughts in her waking hours, as well as her memories from the past, building up a sense of her questionable character and backstory. Despite how unlikable she is, our narrator’s story resonates in the era of a mental health crisis. She plays both patient and psychologist, deciding what will heal her, entirely unaided by professional help as her psychiatrist is out of the picture due to the narrator’s constant lies.
The narrator repeatedly makes very sharp – although often cruel – observations about other people. She’s experienced loss and rejection throughout her life.
Whilst the plot may seem a little superficial, the storyline surrounds the mental health issues that the narrator and her friend Reva are facing. The book is peopled by unsympathetic characters but surprisingly I realised I wanted to spend time with them, even if the unnamed ‘heroine’ sleeps through much of the story. Her story is so raw. There’s nothing romanticised here, the narrator is realistic and honest, and depression is displayed openly throughout the novel. You can really feel the main character’s monotony, the lethargy, the pointlessness of it all.
Interestingly, the book operates under the premise that the reader knows 9/11 is approaching. As for the effect of the looming impact of 9/11 on the book, it completely colours the mood and tone. In the context of the narrator’s avoidance of the news, here, finally, will be something of such magnitude that she cannot ignore it.Moshfegh’s writing is continuously compelling, her storytelling cool, strange, aloof, and disciplined. The entire book is somewhat bizarre but strangely addictive. It is a little repetitive at times but that is the reality of the narrator’s life as she attempts to sleep away a full year.
A wonderful novel full of the darkest of black comedy, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is unlike anything I’ve read before.
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 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 to get through. It is complex and addictive, touching on triggering topics and a character who is neither relatable nor likeable. However, through her unique voice, Moshfegh reels you into her world and won’t let go. There is absolutely no one to root for, truly no one and still this book managed to keep me hooked until the last page.
Reading the story of this spoiled, troubled socialite living out an experience that is both horribly destructive and economically unfeasible kept me entertained from start to finish.
Overall reaction:
