My Year of Rest & Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Title: My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Author Name: Ottessa Moshfegh

Age Rating: Adult

Star Rating: ✦✦✦✦✦

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Summary:

This is a book that starts with a girl who wastes money on things like lingerie and bad coffee and ends with a minimalist who feeds bread to the birds at the park. My year of rest and relaxation is sad and unemotional in its telling. With a character who passively describes her life as though she is but a spectator, you can’t help but simultaneously pity and dislike our sad nameless narrator. 

Favorite Character:

NOBODY. Every character in this book was honestly so sad to read about. Moshfegh is a master at writing unlikeable characters.

I took a solid break of a couple of days midway through the book simply because of how much secondhand embarrassment I experienced as I read.

I think social media has painted the book and its characters as something that they’re not. The MC is not the empowering girl boss people say she is. I find that her behavior was honestly disgusting at times. Her lack of motivation was signified by how she fell asleep in the closet at work. She is not a “girlboss.”

Overall, if I had to say there was a likable character, it was probably Dr. Tuttle, the weirdo psychiatrist who forgets that MC’s parents are dead, over and over. She is clearly running an illegal practice here, and I wonder how she got her qualifications to legally treat others. Tuttle is goofy, absentminded, and hilariously criminal with how she throws medications at the MC’s problems to fix them.

One of the fictional drugs she prescribes (ones that sound legit)  is Infermiterol which causes MC to enter a hilariously weird drug trip in which she orders takeout and Victoria’s Secret packages in her sleep.

Storyline Development:

The unnamed protagonist of this acclaimed book is a disgusting goblin who should probably not be boring me with her sob story… A messy, uncaring, and uninteresting protagonist is what gets me angry. Not only is MC (aka Main Character) a sad girl, (the likes of which trumps every 2014 Tumblr wannabe), she’s tall, well off (due to inheritance), and blonde and thin and pretty.

She would fit the bill of a pretty and successful NYC socialite if she were actually social. MC shows us how sad her life is. She tries to take drugs to drown out the pain and her personality is… unlikable to say the least.

Clearly, the MC has some form of depression, which is what drives her behavior throughout the story. Overall comes down to what I wrote earlier “you can’t help but simultaneously pity and dislike” her. 

If there was anything relatable about the main character, it was the fact that she wanted to sleep for a whole year. As someone who loves to wake up late and oversleep, I completely understand the wish to simply dream away your days.

Worldbuilding:

I am pleasantly surprised how the bodega (where MC gets her coffee) remains a nice central location for the story. MC spends a great deal of time going to the bodega and then coming back to her comfy apartment, and the bodega is manned by ‘the Egyptians.’ Of course, the worldbuilding is pretty nice, we have the key locations like Reva’s house (which is visited only once, yet talked about for a good while), the MC’s apartment, and of course, the daily places that MC visits when she feels like leaving the house. 

My Thoughts:

How are MC’s eyes not damaged from the days she spends watching movies and getting little to no light into her eyes as she sleeps her days away?

Lowkey, I hate yet love this book. Its side character Reva is the most real character ever. She keeps it real by being a chronically horrible friend who likes to drink alcohol, throw up her food (she’s bulimic), and being infinitely jealous of MC’s inability to gain weight. Reva is clearly using the MC for her things and wealth and also just to brag to her.

I think this book really shows how ugly the world is for some people, and can show why some people might resort to drugs to solve their pain.

It also showcases how some people are just disgusting. For example, the artist, Ping Xi, who helped the MC lock herself in her room to sleep, should’ve done something else. Instead of suggesting that she get some help, he went along with her plan in order to fuel his own art.