My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

 

I can't remember where I first saw positive reviews for Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, but I know there were a lot of them when this book came out. It's adult contemporary fiction, which isn't one of my preferred genres, but the buzz for it was intriguing and the story sounded interesting. I decided to give it a try, but never got around to it. It ended up just sitting on my shelf for ages, so I made it part of my 22 in 2022 Challenge and finally picked it up last week.

The plot of the novel is pretty quirky, so it's tough to do it justice with a quick summary. It follows a young woman living alone in a fancy New York City apartment. She lives off of an inheritance she received when her parents passed away and is blessed with a natural beauty that has others comparing her to celebrities all the time. Nothing is overtly wrong with her life--she essentially has it all without ever having had to work for any of it-- but still, she feels depressed and isn't finding any joy in anything. She decides to take a year off from engaging with the world in the hopes that when she emerges into society, she feels refreshed and reborn. 

She is determined to sleep through as much of her year as possible, so she finds a psychiatrist who is willing to write prescription after prescription for heavy duty sleep aids without asking many questions. Armed with endless pills, she settles into a routine of long stretches of sleeping punctuated by short bursts of blearily grabbing a bite to eat and watching movies on her couch. Throughout her year, she is sometimes visited by Reva, a friend from college that won't give up on their toxic relationship. She is mostly alone though, and spends her waking time reminiscing about the different people and situations in her life that have pushed her to this state. Eventually, her medications begin losing effectiveness and causing some weird side effects, and she has to go to even greater lengths to finish out her year of rest.

This was a very strange read, but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. That's really saying something for me, because the protagonist is self-obsessed, mean, and mostly unlikeable, a lot of details in the text are just gross, and barely anything happens in the plot. The writing, however, was darkly comedic and interesting enough to keep me entertained in spite of all that. Plus, the whole idea of just deciding to withdraw from everything for a year and escape into sleep is more aspirational for me than I would like to admit. Despite being quite different to the main character, I could still relate to the idea of being disillusioned with life even though nothing is wrong and dealing with that dissatisfaction through sleep. Deliberately trying to sleep through a whole year is a weird idea and would probably kill you if you attempted to do it the same way this character does, but it was intriguing to watch her try. I moved through the novel quickly, always engaged and always eager to see what would happen next.

Looking at the reviews on Goodreads, I can see that opinions on this novel are definitely mixed. Some people can relate to it and like the snarky writing style. Others find it completely insufferable and boring. I think a good test to determine if you would like it or not would be to consider whether you like the HBO series Girls. If you hated that, you will almost certainly hate this too. If you liked it or didn't mind it, this might be a good choice for you. The protagonist is the same kind of annoying that those characters are. This kind of self-centered young woman character type is intentional on the part of Moshfegh, of course, but it is the kind of character that makes some people very angry, so I think that's where the divide comes from. I personally think it is unique enough and well-written enough to be worth the read. 

So ultimately, I enjoyed My Year of Rest and Relaxation. It was certainly one of the strangest stories I've read in a while, and it was nice to venture outside of my usual genres and try something new. I would be interested in checking out more of Ottessa Moshfegh's work in the future, as I think she has a creative mind and a darkly appealing style. This was a weird ride, but a worthwhile one!

Challenge Tally

22 in 2022: 9/22

Total Books Read in 2022: 38