Book Review: “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”
The 2019 novel “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” spins the story of a woman who decides to complete a hibernation experiment in hopes of getting a break from everyday life.
January 23, 2022
After years of cyclical distress, one 20-something New York woman is bound to change her life. Her plan? Sleep for a whole year with the help of pills and a whole lot of TV-watching.
The novel “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh weaves the few remaining threads of a nameless narrator’s sanity into a story of privilege, grief and pain. The narrator is a conventionally gorgeous woman living in New York City in the year 2000. She should have it all, but she is sloppy, lazy and apathetic to the movements around her.
The narrator’s story starts with a decision to quit her job at a hip art gallery to focus on her favorite hobby: sleeping. Her goal is to spend the better part of her year sleeping and getting the rest she feels will “reset her.”
With the assistance of her batty psychiatrist, Dr. Tuttle, the narrator mixes medications to achieve her blissful unconsciousness. Her routine develops into days of sleep mixed with the occasional walk from her trust-fund apartment to her local bodega for two coffees and junk food.
The narrator is plagued by her best friend, Reva, who is image-obsessed, an effective user of passive aggression and fastidious in all the most irritating ways. The narrator reflects on her friendship with Reva the whole novel, often resenting her presence or relishing Reva’s mutual disgust of the narrator.
Sometimes, the narrator relives her knotty relationship with her two deceased parents. She replays the ambiguous moments she shared with her drunken “Barbie” mother or the few memories of her inaccessible, intelligent father.
The novel takes readers through a blurry narrative of a modern woman gone mad. Moshfegh uses dark humor and brittle sarcasm to intrigue the reader despite the molasses-slow plot. The narrator’s wit and general nonchalant attitude about her year of pharmaceutical-induced rest is reason enough to turn each page.
“My Year of Rest and Relaxation” segued sentiments of entitlement, beauty, image, psychiatry and laziness into the jumbled narrative of a woman who just wants some sleep.
