My Year of Rest and Relaxation-Ottessa Moshfegh Review

 Triggers:

• Ableism slur (r-word)
• Abortion (mentioned)
• Addiction
• Cancer
• Death
• Depression
• Drug use
• Eating disorder
• Emotional abuse
• Racism
• Sexual assault
• Suicide

I have heard about this novel through Goodreads and it was recommended to me as similar to books I have already read. In digging a little bit further, it was described as some kind of alternative, dissociated, angry feminist fiction, which did seem like something I might enjoy. All I knew is that the main character is a young woman who decides to spend a year of her life essentially sleeping her life away. In today's world of hustle culture and toxic productivity, the idea that you can do that seemed incredibly appealing and fascinating to me. I was wondering who is this woman, what made her want to do that and finally, how was she able to achieve this endeavor? However, I must say that this was one of the most vapid, pointless pieces of fiction I have read since 'A Little Life' and I regret almost every minute I have spent on it.

This review will contain major spoilers.

The main character and the narrator of the novel is a young and rich art graduate with a good job, a few good friends, connections in the art world and good inheritance from her parents. Throughout, the readers are shown that even while they were alive, she had almost no relationship with her parents. Her father was largely absent and her mother a neglectful alcoholic. After graduating from college, she works in an art gallery, but it is obvious that she is depressed and unhappy, eventually losing her job and relying on the property she is renting for income. The main plot is her decision to find a quack doctor that would keep prescribing her a cocktail of drugs to her to continue with her plan of sleeping a whole year. And that is it. That is the whole plot of this highly praised and hyped up, angry feminist novel.

First of all, the main narrator is so unlikable, shallow and full of herself that after a while I had lost every shred of interest I had in her story. While there is nothing wrong with having an imperfect or even straight up evil and despicable protagonist, this narrator had absolutely no substance to her. She is just mean and nasty for the sake of it. Compare her to a far more dangerous and villainous character-Amy Dunne from Gone Girl. Although absolutely a horrible person, she is a fascinating character that kept me at the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading. This narrator is just...dull and boring, while presenting herself to be the most fascinating person in the world, allowing herself to be horrible to others.

Speaking of others, in addition to the narrator's parents who read like stereotypical, neglectful WASP parents, the only other two important characters are Reva and the narrator's off and on...partner, I guess? One of the main reasons for my ultimate dislike of this character is the way she treats the only friend she has left in her life. From her perspective, Reva is naive, silly and stupid only because she cares about things that the narrator does not. It is very much giving 'not like other girls' from her perspective. But the way she treats Reva when she is talking about her suffering over her mother's illness and death is quite frankly disgusting and poor Reva deserved so much better. I understand the need to include the narrator's partner who is much older than her and treats her like a rag doll and for sexual gratification, while she keeps going back to him, continuing the cycle of abuse. The passages where she describes how he uses her body are so disgusting they made me shiver. There are indeed men and women like that in the world, who have no issues with using others in such a way. I think that this was probably one of the most successful parts of the whole story precisely because of how revolting it was, but fundamentally it played no major part in the story as a whole. 

Moshfegh is a talented author, her sentence structure and prose are excellent and I do like that modern female authors are becoming less afraid of tapping into the dark sides of the female psyche and exposing it. However, my biggest issue with 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation' in general is that there is absolutely no substance to it. I hate to say it, but the author's style is not enough to elevate this into anything more than a weird, self indulgent, trite story with nothing much to offer. Halfway through, it becomes a shopping list of things she does every day, without any actual improvement or realizations.  The introduction of the artist character that will suddenly make her process into an art project felt like a cop out when she needed some action and plot. It was too late, stale and unconvincing to me. Similarly, while the narrator works in the gallery, there are things she does that honestly seem to be added as a shock factor to show us how quirky or messed up the protagonist is. 

I understand that this is also a story about depression, shown in her lethargy and monotony, the feeling that everything she does is pointless at the end. But, it was all left on a pretty surface level without actually exploring this debilitating condition more. Because of her wealth through her parents, she is able to get medicated, something that many people do not have, but this was never even mentioned in any significant way. To be fair, this is something that a person like her would not really think about or be aware of, but it could have been explored through Reva, who does not have all those privileges and is making do with what she has, like everybody are. For me, the explanation that the lack of substance is because the main character is depressed simply does not cut it as this aspect is not explored at all either.

The ending is honestly the part I hated the most and I can even say it made me legitimately angry. After waking up from her Infermiterol coma, (this is a fictional drug the author invented for the purpose of the story) she is suddenly a whole new person that is not an unhappy, bitter woman but somebody who enjoys going for walks and notices the little things in life. This felt too sudden and jarring as there was no indication that there was any improvement in how the narrator was feeling or observing the world and once again, really unconvincing. Then, the second half of the chapter suddenly shifts gears and introduces the idea that Reva died in 9/11 as the narrator has a recording of a woman jumping out of the building. Whether this really is Reva or not, the readers are left to wonder. My question was: what was the point of that? Was is it to show that the narrator suddenly feels sorry for Reva because she had time to rest and is no longer depressed and cruel? Please do let me know how you read that because I was shocked at the casualty in which this theme was introduced to the story, especially considering how triggering and upsetting the event still is for so many people.

At the end, this whole story just seemed so pointless to me. I got absolutely nothing out of it, except feeling like I have wasted my time reading about a caricature of a woman. This was heavily advertised to me as some kind of modern feminist rebellion and if this is the way we are moving forward, I am very scared for future generations of women. Try as I might, I found no redeeming qualities to this story. The author published another novel- Lapvona that is apparently incredibly disturbing and bizarre. But after the experience of reading 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation', I am not sure I will endeavour to read that one.

Finally, I rated this book 1/5 as I strongly disliked it. Did you read this novel? What were your thoughts on it?

source: theguardian.com