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My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Ottessa Moshfegh

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Sep 23, 2018 jo added it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, the-young-and-the-beautiful

i feel the zeitgeist is pushing us relentlessly toward literature written by young people. it's literature that, almost by necessity, is about young people.

i have nothing in common (well, almost nothing) with the nameless protagonist/narrator of this book (i do own a full-length white fox fur, which i wear with élan in miami), but again, she is not exactly meant to be, as the kids say, relatable.

still, i desperately want to go back to reading about people my own age (and no, not men; i want to ...more

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Mar 29, 2019 Tanya rated it liked it · review of another edition

If someone is not a good person, do their struggles become less relatable? Can there be sympathy for an incredibly privileged woman who cares about nobody but herself, who almost revels in her meanspirited observation and occasional acts of vandalism, as she copes with unprocessed grief for parents who never showed her affection, and her waning mental and physical health? And can we actually believe the struggles of an unreliable narrator who spends the entirety of the novel in a narcotized stat If someone is not a good person, do their struggles become less relatable? Can there be sympathy for an incredibly privileged woman who cares about nobody but herself, who almost revels in her meanspirited observation and occasional acts of vandalism, as she copes with unprocessed grief for parents who never showed her affection, and her waning mental and physical health? And can we actually believe the struggles of an unreliable narrator who spends the entirety of the novel in a narcotized state, drifting between long stretches of sleep and irritated, disinterested moments of wakefulness?

Ottessa Moshfegh writes like a dancer performs. Every movement is calculated and so is each word. It creates a rhythm and flow like a lithe, intentionally awkward modern dancer's audition on a reality TV show. There are bursts of short, blunt sentences, followed by philosophical introspection that is both lyrically beautiful and coldly alienating. But just like I have a hard time interpreting and emotionally connecting with modern dance, so am I left perplexed and unfulfilled by this book. Sure, who among us hasn't felt so overwhelmed and exhausted by the world and our feelings about it that we said "I wish I could sleep for a year." Most of us do not have the privilege to completely retreat and detach, like the unnamed character, who doesn't have to worry about money or work or people who need her to be present. (And even if there are people who need her, like her best friend Reva who has her own struggles, Moshfegh's phlegmatic heroine can't be bothered to do more than feign interest and tell her friend to "stop being a spazz.")

And so, this nameless woman who "looks like a model" (and likes to remind us of this frequently, because she feels her beauty is both a great burden and a source of pride) swallows an extravagant, terrifying cocktail of drugs prescribed to her by a psychiatrist who has no scruples and in general makes no sense. She sleeps, she shuffles to a bodega for provisions, she watches VHS tapes of her favorite Whoopi Goldberg movies (the novel takes place from 2000 to 2001), and she sleeps some more. At one point she starts taking a drug that causes her to lose three days at a time, during which time she goes on somnambulistic shopping sprees, cuts off her hair, calls her sleazebag ex-boyfriend. When we finally reach the end of her "year of rest and relaxation", certain turns of events (fictional and real) are predictable and don't carry emotional weight. I finished the last page not sure why the book was even written. It was absolutely unique, grotesquely funny and sad at times, and devoid of any deeper purpose or meaning. And that is maybe what Moshfegh intended. That there is often no meaning to the struggles, that even people who have every resource at their hands still succumb to despair, and we are all just selfishly focused on our own survival, whatever it may be. That is, if Moshfegh even had a point to make altogether. I'm not sure, and it feels like she may not be either. ...more

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Mar 07, 2020 Becca Boland rated it really liked it

Genre: Literary fiction; Psychological fiction
Themes: Comedy of manners; Go your own way; Toxic relationships
Character: Complex; Flawed
Storyline: Character-driven
Tone: Darkly humorous
Writing Style: Compelling

1 like · Like · see review