Ottessa Moshfegh

FROM THE MAN BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF EILEEN THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'Savage, funny, frequently on the verge of teetering into lunacy... My Year of Rest and Relaxationis a non-negotiable in your holiday carry-on this summer' Vogue It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? Our narrator has many of the advantages of life- Young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the heart of things, and it isn't just the loss of her parents in college, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her alleged best friend. Blackly funny, both merciless and compassionate - dangling its legs over the ledge of 9/11 - My Year of Rest and Relaxationis a showcase for the gifts of one of America's major young writers.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

"Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility, what could be so terribly wrong?" -- from publisher's description.

 ★

“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. I did all the right things. I rebelled in silent ways, with my thoughts.”

Sarah Campbell

I breathed and walked and sat on a bench and watched a bee circle the heads of a flock of passing teenagers. There was majesty and grace in the pace of the swaying branches of the willows. There was kindness. Pain is not the only touchstone for growth, I said to myself. My sleep had worked. I was soft and calm and felt things. This was good. This was my life now. I could survive without the house. I understood that it would soon be someone else's store of memories and that was beautiful. I could move on.

Jas 🐸

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.

 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.”

Lindy

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. 

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 wanted

my 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. 

tara  (she/her)

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. 

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

debbie <3

Everyone I knew at school hated me because I was so pretty.

moira

…that it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn’t

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.

She was beautiful, with all her nerves and all her complicated, circuitous feelings and contradictions and fears. This would be the last time I'd see her in person.

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.

llikaditoo 

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.

I was lucky to have my dead parents' money, I knew, but that was also depressing.

juana de arco si estuviera cronicamente online

“Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then—that when I’d slept enough, I’d be okay. I’d 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.”

“I did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it”

coco

“There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.”

it was a really good book to start my year with

Vasilisa

A young woman becomes obsessed with sleeping away a year of her life in order to be born anew. This is my third foray into Moshfegh’s famously unreliable and unlikeable narrators, and I’m so pleased to see that I can enjoy living inside her characters thoughts after being supremely disappointed by Death in her Hands. This novel also features a somewhat stream-of-consciousness style inner world of a mostly idle character. Where Death in her Hands revealed extreme anxiety, My Year of Rest and Relaxation seems more about the unnamed main character’s narcissism and cruelty. Despite very little of the book being spent outside of her apartment, this novel kept me riveted. Funny timing for reading this book while trying to heal from burnout, so just premise of sleeping for a year (or more!) is extremely interesting. I did call the plot events at the end, but was surprised that Moshfegh went relatively easy on our protagonist. All for the best, so I can remain jealous of this method of self progression. Good thing infermiterol is made up ;)

constance

interesting character study, but that’s about it. the only thing i found worth reading was the relationship between the narrator and reva. extremely slow at the beginning, but it picks up towards the middle. it wasn’t very funny, i only laughed twice. the psychiatrist character and the whoopi goldberg tangents were especially unfunny. eye-roll worthy ending.

Emilia Noel

tall blonde pretty pretentious, 4 words to describe. the main character. i do find her an interesting exhibit to watch and channel, but i find the book helps her hide the way she acts around other people , it makes her seem more detached than she actually seems to be

Zaya Purev

This book made me deeply uncomfortable, yet I couldn't stop reading.

It was written very accurately to the emotional state of someone who was filled with dreariness and a desire to sleep away her grief.

What an interesting take on loss and sadness.

Still not my favorite, but it was interesting.

This book made me deeply uncomfortable, yet I couldn't stop reading.
It was written very accurately to the emotional state of someone who was filled with dreariness and a desire to sleep away her grief.
What an interesting take on loss and sadness.
Still not my favorite, but it was interesting.

Khoa Dang

It was a very honest perception of depression and the effects it has on the mindset you have about yourself and everyone else around you. 

Brandi

needed a year of rest and relaxation after reading this book. rly disliked it, felt like an entirely squandered book which was a shame considering the interesting premise, draggy etcetera 

tanya 

As someone who’s 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 level…

Also enjoyed the character(s) journey through grief. Both insightful and affirming.

As someone who’s 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 level…

Also enjoyed the character(s) journey through grief. Both insightful and affirming.

Escrito hermoso, no me gustó tanto como pensé 

there she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.

sehr, sehr unterhaltsam und bringt einen gleichzeitig zum Nachdenken über den Sinn des Lebens & wie man über ihn nachdenkt, wenn Karriere und Reichtum keine Rolle spielen!

Mareike

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. 

Moshfegh can list things! I loved the way she was so flippant about commas. Who needs them! Great book, short sentences, grimy feeling.

Eli Alvah Huckabee

It’s kinda amazing that the author could capture her woozy, hazy state of mind throughout the book. But I don’t particularly like the ending, and the references they make. The build up was exciting but the ending just didn’t do it for me. 

Sakinah Safiee

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 isn’t a choice or something you can help, it is an illness. But also warns Life isn’t something you can put on hold. The people you love and the world around you can’t wait.

Jenny Zhong

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.

larissa campos 

kinda amusing but mostly depressing, could've been shorter maybe

https://nsnajla.medium.com/layer-and-layers-being-a-complex-human-my-year-of-rest-and-relaxation-by-ottessa-moshfegh-a6b45bced471

Alma

read my full review here :)

https://nsnajla.medium.com/layer-and-layers-being-a-complex-human-my-year-of-rest-and-relaxation-by-ottessa-moshfegh-a6b45bced471

honestly i don’t even know… it just left me very unsettled… i thought it was going to be a lot more interesting.. to the girl in B&N that said this was good… are you okay???

It was odd to live in someone‘s private thoughts

Lili

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. 

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

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