My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Reviews
As someone whoās dream literally used to be to sleep for a year (but without the means to) it was really interesting to read how selfish depression can make you and the mental hoops you must jump through to justify/ignore your bad behavior on a spiritual levelā¦
Also enjoyed the character(s) journey through grief. Both insightful and affirming.
Escrito hermoso, no me gustĆ³ tanto como pensĆ©
there she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.
sehr, sehr unterhaltsam und bringt einen gleichzeitig zum Nachdenken Ć¼ber den Sinn des Lebens & wie man Ć¼ber ihn nachdenkt, wenn Karriere und Reichtum keine Rolle spielen!
The unnamed narrator presents as a thoroughly unlikeable character for most of the story, yet in her rare sober moments, the narrator's poignant recount of her tumultuous upbringing give insight into her character and the cycles of abuse she's been trapped in.
love alle lijstjes
Moshfegh can list things! I loved the way she was so flippant about commas. Who needs them! Great book, short sentences, grimy feeling.
Itās kinda amazing that the author could capture her woozy, hazy state of mind throughout the book. But I donāt particularly like the ending, and the references they make. The build up was exciting but the ending just didnāt do it for me.
Incredibly accurate metaphor of depression. She quite literally sleeps through her waking life. Holds a mirror up to toxic behavior on display that should not be replicated by anyone. The book lays out that depression isnāt a choice or something you can help, it is an illness. But also warns Life isnāt something you can put on hold. The people you love and the world around you canāt wait.
I'd say that this books falls flat. it had a nice concept, very different and intriguing, but it didn't impact my life as i thought it would, something that can be my fault. I had moments where the book made me really think, revalue some thoughts, revalue some concepts, but somehow it never built a revolutionary feeling... good first read for the year tho, it made sense and i'm happy that my intuition chose this one.
kinda amusing but mostly depressing, could've been shorter maybe
honestly i donāt even knowā¦ it just left me very unsettledā¦ i thought it was going to be a lot more interesting.. to the girl in B&N that said this was goodā¦ are you okay???
It was odd to live in someoneās private thoughts
One of the most overhyped books in Pinterest and Tiktok. Maybe I was expecting too much from this but it's all so mundane, it was an okay read. Didn't change me as a person. Maybe because I'm already too insufferable and depressed to care but overall, it was written well, it was vivid, and realistic. I love that the characters were flawed and weren't perfect, I feel like authors avoid writing those so I'm glad that this book didn't shy away from doing that. It's okay.
what a suicidal bitch
Best celebration of drug use for fun and self medication of the season.
girl get a diary
Ik vond het een langdradig boek om doorheen te komen. Want het gaat merendeels over hetzelfde, maar ik moet zeggen dat ik het einde wel bijzonder vond. Ik dacht echt good for her. Maar dit boek beschrijft een leven die ik niet op zoān manier had kunnen en willen aanpakken. Maakt het hierom wel weer interessant om de gedachtegang van een tegenovergesteld levens perspectief te bekijken.
vind dat het boek als een soort kunstwerk is geschreven doet me denken aan het kunstwerk āmy bedā van Tracy Emin. Dit maakt het hierdoor wel een melancholische fantasie in je hoofd.
bedrot on creative mode ! reading the reviews of this book is a better experience than the book itself but if postgrad doesnāt work out for me iām treating this as a self help book
Insufferable female lead. Not sure if this is satire, but wow, the whole premise of locking yourself in so you could just sleep for 4 months was really intriguing, and I could not stop wondering what would've happened if by the end of her project nothing had changed for her still. It still fascinates me the way people handle grief so differently. The ending was a bit underwhelming, but maybe because I expected more.
Ugh I got a lot to say but I wonāt say anything lol 3/5
** spoiler alert ** I finished this manically, within an evening. I appreciate how Moshfegh delivers the sexually explicit content in this satirical novel. The descriptions of intimacy are sterile, void of sensuality, sometimes full of boredom and, at times, desperate. This seems part and parcel the point, treating sex with others and yourself as fleeting, or routine, equal to eating and sleeping. The delivery of intimacy in this novel is where Iām most convinced of itās genius. Itās in these moments that the reader is made to feel like they, too, are in the haze of a cocktail of semi-legal drugs. Iām still working out how I feel about the ending. I get, in a straightforward way, how the whole text is wrapped in a neat bow concerning Reva and what transpires on 9/11 and that the bitter truth of it all is privilege triumphs, effortlessly. Iām mostly feeling a burning sensation as this book left me fueled to continue in my active repulsion of the Girl, Interrupted syndrome. On that note, Iām concerned at the categorization of My Year as Sad Girl Lit. The book is so purposefully absurd in its depiction of depression it almost makes me want to join the 5 am club. Job well done / ennui cured! But, seriously.
i suppose i jus dont understand why this book was written
Highlights
Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion.
I did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it. I'd be punished if I showed signs of suffering, I knew. So I was good.
[in ref. to MCās parents]
Think of your beauty Achilles' heel. Youre too much on the surface. I don't say that offensively. But it's the truth. It's hard to look past what you look like.ā
and I remembered watching her "put her face on," as she called it, and wondering if one day I'd be like her, a beautiful fish in a man-made pool, circling and circling, surviving the tedium only because my memory can contain only what is imprinted on the last few minutes of my life, constantly forgetting my thoughts.
what an analogy
Reva was like the pills I took. They turned everything, even hatred, even love, into fluff I could bat away. And that was exactly what I wantedāmy emotions passing like headlights that shine softly through a window, sweep past me, illuminate something vaguely familiar, then fade and leave me in the dark again.
The lightheartedness in that wish struck me, and for a moment I felt joyful, and then I felt completely exhausted.
I wanted to hold on to the house the way you'd hold on to a love letter. It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world. But I think I was also holding on to the loss, to the emptiness of the house itself, as though to affirm that it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn't.
Life was fragile and fleeting and one had to be cautious, sure, but I would risk death if it meant I could sleep all day and become a whole new person.
An "alternative" to the mainstream frat boys and premed straight and narrow guys, these scholarly, charmless, intellectual brats dominated the more creative departments. As an art history major, I couldn't escape them. "Dudes" reading Nietzsche on the subway, reading Proust, reading David Foster Wallace, jotting down their brilliant thoughts into a black Moleskine pocket notebook. Beer bellies and skinny legs, zip-up hoodies, navy blue peacoats or army green parkas, New Balance sneakers, knit hats, canvas tote bags, small hands, hairy knuckles, maybe a deer head tattoos across a flabby bicep. They rolled their own cigarettes, didn't brush their teeth enough, spent a hundred dollars a week on coffee.
herkenbaar
Everyone I knew at school hated me because I was so pretty.
girl be for real
ā¦that it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldnāt
I wanted to hold on to the house the way you'd hold on to a love letter. It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world.
Life was fragile and fleeting and one had to be cautious, sure, but I would risk death if it meant I could sleep all day and become a whole new person.
banger so me
I sensed Reva's misery in the room with me. It was the particular sadness of a young woman who has lost her mother-complex and angry and soft, yet oddly hopeful. I recognized it. But l didn't feel it inside of me. The sadness was just floating around in the air. It became denser in the graininess of shadows.
I wanted to hold on to the house the way you'd hold on to a love letter. It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world. But I think I was also holding on to the loss, to the emptiness of the house itself, as though to affirm that it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn't.
The art world had turned out to be like the stock market, a reflection of political trends and the persuasions of capitalism, fueled by greed and gossip and cocaine.
Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion.
I was lucky to have my dead parents' money, I knew, but that was also depressing.
Can relate
āSleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heartāthis was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back thenāthat when Iād slept enough, Iād be okay. Iād be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation.ā
āI did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for itā
āRejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion.ā