“My Year of Rest and Relaxation”, Ottessa Moshfegh
Published July 10, 2018
A novel about a young woman’s 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’t she? She’s 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’t 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’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
“Oh, 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.”
Who doesn’t love an unhinged, unreliable narrator once in a while? Our unnamed toxic queen in Manhattan is doing everything in her power to do the absolute least, to the point where she makes it her goal to literally sleep through a year of her life.
Fun fact: the cover is an oil painting titled “Portrait of a Young Woman in White“ from c. 1798 by an unknown artist. The original painting shows a nipple, but it has been removed in the book cover.
Content Warnings
Note: This is not an exhaustive list of content and trigger warnings.
drug abuse • eating disorder • death of parent • addiction • toxic friendships • suicidal thoughts
Goodreads | Storygraph | Bookshop (support your local bookstore)
Owned: paperback from Capital Books on K