my year of rest and relaxation by ottessa moshfegh
a love letter to writing books about despicable people
“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.”
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation
When I finished reading “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” I stared up at the ceiling, the book strewn across my lap, unsure of exactly how I felt.
While its premise is simple enough, the feelings this book elicited from me were not. I knew that I loved the writing style — Ottessa Moshfegh is very talented, especially with the way she intimately gets into a character’s head. She has a knack for always making her characters feel like real human beings with all their complexities and flaws. I loved her book “Eileen” for that reason. But the unnamed main character of “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” was such a disgustingly selfish person that I spent most of the book cringing at everything she said and did. I also struggled a lot with the ending. But yet, like I said, I found the book so well written. So I was conflicted in how I felt.
Yet the more I sat with this book, letting my thoughts marinate instead of forcing myself to come to an instant conclusion, the less complicated my feelings were. I realised what Ottessa Moshfegh had actually accomplished was made me feel so intrigued by such a despicable protagonist that I couldn’t put the book down. You have to be pretty talented to write such a hateful character and still keep the reader turning the page. And I was invested. Fully invested — despite the book making me feel repulsed by how awful human beings can be.
I guess it reminded me that not everyone we cross paths with on this planet is likeable or inspiring — but sometimes they can make a very interesting story.
“My Year of Rest and Relaxation” takes place in New York in 2000/2001 and follows an unnamed protagonist who decides to self-medicate so she can sleep for an entire year. She wants to feel nothing for twelve months and wake up afterwards as though she has been reborn. But this unnamed protagonist is also incredibly jaded and spoiled with a hefty inheritance, disturbingly judgemental of everyone around her, and very materialistic and vain. She had complicated relationships with both of her recently deceased parents, especially her mother. She currently has a very toxic on-and-off again relationship with an older man named Trevor, and a jealously-fuelled friendship with Reva who she has known since college. She also has a particularly funny relationship with her pill-happy psychiatrist, who provides plenty of comic-relief to such a dark and often depressing story. I’ve seen her psychiatrist described as a “laid-back lunatic” and honestly this description fits — she’s a character you won’t forget for how over the top she is.
I’m sure you’re wondering how Moshfegh could write an entire book about an over-privileged woman choosing to sleep for a year. I certainly wondered that before I began reading. But trust me when I say this book was strangely intriguing and satisfyingly weird. I read it quickly, almost feverishly — I needed to discover what this book was building towards and if the protagonist’s plan to wake up after a year of sleep was going to successfully ‘rebirth’ her'. Or at the very least provide her with a brand new outlook on life — perhaps even setting her on the path to redemption, or something akin to that.
But I think what pulled me into this insular world that Moshfegh created the most was her ability to shine light on the dark and cruel parts of life we often find ourselves glossing over.
There are lots of uncomfortable topics and themes touched on, such as addiction, eating disorders and mental health struggles, with plenty of unsettling descriptions of bodily functions, sardonic humour and repulsive thoughts sprinkled throughout. It’s not for everyone. And I think what is important to remember before reading this book is that these topics are handled from the perspective of a protagonist who has very little respect for any of them. This could potentially be triggering to somebody who has experienced any of these topics or themes for themselves firsthand. I personally haven’t experienced them to the extremes mentioned in this book, but even I was quite thrown when I first read them. So please keep that in mind.
When I think about “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” even weeks after reading it, I find myself thinking of it as a quintessential book for truely unlikeable female protagonists. It’s honestly an incredible and intimate character study of somebody you wouldn’t want to be associated with in the real world. But the first person narration is fantastic because we really get to see this character’s perspective on things completely unfiltered — the awful and judgemental thoughts she has, and the self-confidence that borders on the line of delusional. This can be downright cringey at times, but I think that’s the point. Moshfegh knows we’re not going to like this character and because of that there’s a lot of self-awareness to the text.
But yet Moshfegh balances out this character’s awfulness by making you feel her depression and anxiety. This book is visceral. The lethargy and feelings of pointlessness are seeping from the pages, and the thoughts she has might seem repetitive and confusing as a reader at first, but for me this adds to the believability of the drug-induced state she is always in. You can feel how far she is pulling away from the world and almost understand this desperate need she has to escape her own mind and body. I’m not sure if this means that I felt sorry for this protagonist specifically, but I think the desire to pull away and escape from yourself are relatable feelings to have in the midst of having bad mental health.
I can understand why this book can be so polarising. I think it can be very hard and pretty uncomfortable to read a book about overly entitled people with their ‘rich people problems’ as well as their unsolicited opinions that come from a place of extreme, often unattainable privilege. But I think it does an exceptional job at reminding us that we’re all capable of drowning in our own inner worlds. For everyone, life can be a painful and exhausting and, oftentimes, gross thing. And that’s because we’re all human beings trying to figure out how to survive on this truely bizarre planet. Obviously “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” takes it to the absolute extreme, but haven’t we all wished, at some point anyway, to be able to sleep away all our problems?
I try to write my love letters with my thoughts fully actualised, but honestly my thoughts surrounding “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” are complicated and still, weeks later, feel pretty jumbled. But what I can say is that I absolutely loathed the protagonist, didn’t agree with her thoughts or judgements even in the slightest, and found the year-long sleep experiment to be such a strange, drastic choice that couldn’t possibly have worked in the real world — but I can’t help but love Ottessa Moshfegh’s take on this book, her craft is unmatched when it comes to writing uncomfortable reads. She really goes to the darkest, most unsettling, most painful places. And it’s why I’ll continue reading the rest of her work.
Links:
Favourite Quotes:
“Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion.”
“Oh, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.”
“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 world was out there still, but I hadn’t looked at it in months. It was too much to consider in all, stretching out, a circular planet covered in creatures and things growing, all of it spinning slowly on an axis created by what — some freak accident? It seemed implausible.”
“I did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it.”
“The notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn't exist yet. I was making it, standing there, breathing, fixing the air around my body with stillness, trying to capture something—a thought, I guess—as though such a thing were possible, as though I believed in the delusion described in those paintings—that time could be contained, held captive.”
Thank you so much for reading my love letter to “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”. I think that this is such an interesting book to discuss and would love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read it. Did you like it? Did you like Ottessa Moshfegh’s writing?
I’m still struggling with how I feel about the ending — that was definitely an ending I was not expecting and I can’t stop thinking about what means. So if you have any thoughts about that, please let me know!
Until next time,
- Madeline
Okay YES, I thoroughly loved this book exactly because of that complicated reaction you described. Couldn’t put it down, I regrettably love to cringe with disgust at terrible people so it’s right in my wheelhouse hehe
lovely post! i love this book so much, is one of my favorites ever. is it bad that i relate to the main character? lol. of course, i don't relate to her awfulness, but to her struggles with mental health. like her, i spent not 1 year, but years in a bed. i didn't rationalize like her ''oh i'm struggling, so i'm just going to sleep for a few years'', no. but my mental health was so fucked up that i couldn't get out of bed, and i slept a lot because of the medication i was taking... when i read this book i was so deep in the depression that i felt like she was describing my situation in the book, and i was so grateful for that. i felt seen. it seems drastic, but in real life a lot of people go through this, but irl they always end up in bed because they are deep into a depression, it's not something they think about doing it to feel refreshed.