Book Review: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Title: My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Author: Ottessa Moshfegh

Release Date: July 2018

Rating: 4.25

Synopsis

Our narrator is arguably living a perfect life on the outside: young, beautiful, educated, living in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with all of her wants and needs paid for. On the inside, she is coping with the death of her parents six months apart, the end of her toxic relationship with her much older boyfriend, and the sadomasochistic friendship with her best friend from college. One day, after realizing that only thing that is making her feel better is sleep, our narrator embarks on a year of rest and relaxation in a pharmaceutical haze with the help of lackadaisical doctor. It’s the year 2000, the turn of the century, this should be the turn of page for our narrator too, right?

Review

Ottessa Moshfegh did an amazing job with bringing this nameless narrator to life. This story talks about so much more than just a few toxic relationships, taking a deeper dive into the psyche of someone who has really lost it all and begun a mental health spiral. While on the outside our nameless narrator is beautiful, rich, and well educated, inside she is vain, judgmental, and entitled. Being the child of a loveless marriage, and with the sudden loss of both her parents, our narrator must learn to grapple with her grief, or lack thereof, all while avoiding the feelings that come along with words unspoken. She finds that sleep is the only thing that makes her feel better, it’s the only thing that makes her stop thinking. To her luck, and the yellow pages of New York City in the year 2000, she finds a doctor who is willing to prescribe her just about anything she needs. And so, her year of rest and relaxation begins.

This book touches deeply on the societal constructs that women are supposed to be beautiful, dainty beings, when in reality women have just as many deep and ugly feelings as anyone else. Grief is never easy, and sometimes keeping the people around that are worse for you make you feel better. This narrator is not someone you will like, she is the worst type of person, however that is part of the point, and through her year of rest and relaxation, you can come to understand that while everyone’s mental health journey can look different, they ultimately are still more often than not uglier than what people make it seem.

TW: death of a parent, suicidal ideation, drug abuse, sexual assault, death, abortion