![]() Why would anyone do this to herself? Because she’s already been made abject and partially erased by everyone she knows. This self-induced coma, powered by prescription psychopharmaceuticals, will be broken only by short intervals of waking, during which she will eat ordered-in pizza and visit the lavatory. Matter of fact, full of bravado yet always wryly observational, these stack up steadily to construct the brisk interior landscape of her third novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation.Ī young New York woman – unnamed, moneyed, a spoiled Wasp by her own account, not long out of higher education and now a receptionist at a gallery where art thinks of itself as subversive but is in fact “just canned counterculture crap” – prepares herself for a year-long sleep. Instead, the sense of immediacy, the sense of being inside a character, the sense of things happening and having psychic value, both to the writer and her reader, is provided by the structure and content of her sentences. But, to redeem a character whose whole persona is a mean, New York socialite with an addiction who takes a ‘life-changing’ nap is a lot to pull off.One of the pleasures of reading Ottessa Moshfegh is that – unusually, these days – she rarely writes in the present tense. ![]() I understand why “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” is popular and acclaimed. ![]() She becomes a better person because she essentially overdoses on sleeping pills, doesn’t die and then sees her best friend, who she has only recently started liking, die in a terror attack. The narrator’s self-improvement is aggravating. But the last 10 pages or so make it a story of redemption when Reva dies in the events of the 9/11 attacks, the narrator is reminded of the fragility of life. If the book were just a look into and criticism of a rich addict who is also a depressed insomniac, I wouldn’t be mad. The narrator is the epitome of everything shallow and terrible about the privileged elite of New York in the early 2000s.Īll of this is fine. But she is bankrolled by her deceased parents’ money and unemployment. She’s comically bad at her job, sleeping in a closet and forgetting tasks. The narrator dislikes her best friend Reva, insulting her looks, attitude and every word. I get the commentary on pre-9/11 New York City, and the privileged people that flocked to it. I understand the push to prove that female main characters can be unlikeable. The problem was the narrator herself, and not because I don’t know what Moshfegh was doing. It felt like I was thinking the narrator’s thoughts for her. The writing was captivating and I laughed out loud at parts, but I found myself being pulled through the novel at a sluggish speed. I was expecting to be wowed I found myself disappointed. It was in the Book Tok section of Barnes and Noble. ![]() I saw this in a bookstore, it had hot pink print and a sad-looking Victorian woman on the cover. The novel ends on September 11, 2001, with the destruction of the twin towers and Reva’s death in the collapse. She wakes up with a moderately better outlook on life. The artist brings her pizza and shampoo in exchange for the ability to create whatever he likes in her empty apartment and with her sleeping body. So, with the aid of an experimental artist and forgetful therapist, she sleeps for four months, waking up every day to eat, shower and ingest sleeping pills. She becomes annoyed that her everyday life (work, her best-friend Reva and her on-and-off boyfriend Trevor) is getting in the way of sleep. She lives her life supplemented by sleeping and consuming anti-anxiety medication or any other pills she can get her hands on. The narrator, who is never named, is a Columbia graduate living in Manhattan and working at an art gallery. The premise of the book is remarkably in tune with pandemic literature, considering Moshfegh published the book in 2018. Released in 2018, the critically-acclaimed book skyrocketed to even more fame outside of the literary world thanks to its social media popularity, its early 2000s aesthetic and a widespread curiosity about mental health. In a post-COVID-19 world, Otessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” found its target audience.
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