My Year of Rest and Relaxation: A Novel

Keep in mind: This is not a spoiler because the text verbs and choice of words identifies that the narrator is speaking PAST TENSE. The book starts off with her remembering the said year when her slumber began. These events ALREADY HAPPENED — we are learning them from her - a time frame beyond the title. Many of the reviews I’ve read criticized the book for being redundant, disgusting, or confusing. Mentions of ableist due to talks of retardation, etc. I don’t see it that way. That language reflects who the main character is: blunt, short-worded, harsh, and unfiltered. We learn this from the very beginning. Yes, this book delivers exactly what the summary promises. Our main character is sleeps away a year due based off many reasons to her. HOWEVER—if you’ve ever experienced depression or serious mental health struggles, you understand where she’s coming from. And I mean real depression, grief, apathy, disgust with the world—not simply “being sad” or “needing to get a grip.” Her attempt to drug herself into a year-long sleep is exaggerated, but not so unrealistic when you consider her mental state. Her end goal was to wake up as a new person. Believes that this project will set her up to be ready to “live again” when she awakens. Why does this matter? If you have ever: • Grieved: that made others uncomfortable • Felt annoyed/overwhelmed others concern • Realized too late what you had • Experienced true emotional numbness …then you understand this narrator. She has a nihilistic view of the world—apathy, emptiness, and a desire to escape without wanting to die. TONE: flat, emotionless, and repetitive. Why? Because that is how the narrator felt during that era. She is speaking from reflecting on a time in her life that she numbed from. This book clearly creates a split in readers depending on their life experiences and expectations: Opinion A: Enjoyed the book, appreciates the darkness, bleakness, and irony, understands the narrator’s background. Opinion B: Hated the book, found it gross, dehumanizing, regrets buying it, and believes it glorifies drugging oneself into oblivion. Opinion C: Neutral, found it okay, nothing special, nothing terrible. It’s obvious the author wrote this for a specific audience. She beautifully captures how life catches up fast, how people change, and how certain experiences shape us. DIFFERENT FROM YOUR TYPICAL “coming-of-age” novel. This is NOT that. This is narrating a past event where she slept for a whole year and what she got out of it. Most average readers are not the target audience. If you prefer happy endings, or filtered positivity, this is not your book. If you read the summary and then feel shocked that you are reading darkness… I’m not sure what to tell you. The narrator is also clearly OLDER RETELLING THE PAST: indicates she was (x) amount of years old during that year of her project. She was young and not where society expects emotional maturity or closure. She’s counting to her mistakes and behavior in ways that are messy or socially unacceptable. That’s real life. Things happen & it changes people. This novel simply shows what usually happens behind closed doors and within the mind. ALL IN ALL: I loved this book. I understand the main character. The juxtaposition and character foils work well. It’s straightforward with predictable outcomes—but that’s exactly what the summary sets up, so I don’t understand why some reviewers are confused. Sometimes it takes a jarring, painful awakening to make you feel differently about living.

She’s unhinged, but I love a book about a girl who says and thinks whatever she wants, even when it’s dark. The dry, dark humor kept me reading the whole time.

I’ve never hated every single character in a book, until now. One just exceedingly worse than the next. While the premise of the book is depression we never get anything substantial from the main character except for a constant, unrealistic borage of pharmaceuticals. (I want to know what happened in the in between.) Who is/was this woman when she’s alert and coherent? Tiny slivers of her childhood trauma along with her privileged 20 something life doesn’t make the reader empathetic to her spiral. It feels performative. The best writing of the entire book was the last paragraph but maybe that was the author’s intention all along. The reader finally feel something other than disdain.

Brilliantly written. Dark, humorous, and captivating. Smart, staccato prose. The story is original and immediately draws you in. While I found the protagonist extremely unlikeable and shallow, I was invested in her story. This speaks to a keenly developed character. This is an unputdownable page-turner.

MC discovered her own form of Severance, IYKYK. Like a car crash in slow motion you cant look away from. Difficult to put down, a breeze to read.

So, I'm not an avid reader. Nor am I a big 'chick lit' fan. I rarely finish books, but I was looking for something to sink my teeth into after a long spell without anything decent to read (by 'decent' I mean nothing I cared about after 20 pages). Well, this book really hit the spot for me. Its a very easy read. Just crack it open and you'll be swept away. The book is written in first person perspective of the main character. I wouldn't say I liked her, nor did I especially dislike her. But I can empathize with her plight. The core concept that drives the plot is pretty provocative - go to sleep for a year and erase your trauma, wake up refreshed and ready to resume life as you were meant to live it, without baggage, without hangups, just living as yourself. Who wouldn't want that? But the way she goes about it, absolutely brilliant. If you can allow yourself to be led down on a journey without constantly pointing out, nitpicking and tearing apart each seemingly unrealistic proposition, you'll be rewarded with an experience that ultimately feels cathartic. I'll admit, there were times that I felt it droned on and on and .... But just speedread beyond that and keep going. The end comes before you know it, and it comes right when you're ready for it. Worth the read.

I began this book and admittedly was drawn in. I guess if the author’s intent was to elicit emotion, it worked.However, the emotion was anger with a little depression mixed in. The two main characters are so mentally unstable and miserable it begins to rub off o the reader. The setting is so miserable, dirty, dark and gray I felt myself getting tired and depressed. The most upsetting thing in this book, however, is the blatant abuse of prescription drugs. With the amounts and mixtures of drugs this author describes the character taking the main character should be dead. Dead by the end of the first chapter. Adivan, ambien, lunesta, lithium, xanax, Valium, trazadone. That’s just some of what she takes. She takes them in high does mixing them with one another and also with alcohol. I’m sure if I tried I could pull this book apart, look for theme and symbolism. I could discuss the integrity of the characters. It’s not worth doing any of those things because this author is not just incredibly ignorant as to these drugs uses, side effects and long term effects but she is horribly irresponsible. Now, in the midst of an prescription drug abuse crisis this author chooses to have a character casually taking 5 ambien with a couple Xanax washed down with a Valium just to go to sleep. The amount of Lithium alone would have left this character brain damaged. When the character abruptly stops putting herself into an unrealistic drug induced stupor she suffers no side effects or withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawing from antidepressants alone is as bad as heroine withdrawal in real life. The book shamelessly promotes drug abuse- long term prescription drug abuse- as a solution to life’s problems. She glorifies the drugs, the abuse, and gives the reader tips and tricks on how to be a drug seeking patient. If any reader that wasn’t aware or what these drugs actually do she could walk away from this thinking that Ambien is harmless. That it has no side effects and that taking several at once would just give you a good night sleep. She would think that mixing Xanax, Valium and Atavan with a chaser of cough syrup isn’t dangerous or downright lethal. This is an instruction manual for suicide or for accidental overdoses. She should be ashamed of herself.

This book is so well written that you feel like the character yourself. Can be sad but honest. Good read

The book came sealed. I’m very happy

Skit bra bok, kunde inte lägga ner den

Estaría horas hablando sobre el tema… escribiendo sobre el asunto, espinoso o polémico. Debería haber sido mi quinto libro, regalo de reyes, pero no me lo trajeron los reyes. Sus majestades no me obsequiaron con este libro, pero tal vez ayudaron con EL PAIS y LA SER. Literalmente seguí el consejo de Leila Guerriero, cuya columna del día 1 de febrero (“CAER DESPIERTA”) aparece aquí, en el centro de la imagen: No sé si lo he precisado, pero LO REPITO SI ES MENESTER, me decidí a leer el libro por: (A) El uno de febrero de este año apareció está columna de LEILA GUERRIERO... Yo me la perdí (porque casi NUNCA leo el periódico del día en el día). (B) Más tarde le oí comentar a Àngels Barceló sobre la columna y el libro. Volví atrás y... ...y encontré el periódico y leí la columna. ¿Y? Y ese mismo día encargué el libro en la red (lo quería en el original inglés [ si era posible]). Llegó enseguida. En seguida lo tuve en casa (pequeño homenaje a Javier Marías, que -si la memoria no me falla- llega a utilizar las dos formas en el mismo libro). Acabé el cuarto y me puse ¡manos a la obra! en la lectura de este gran libro con ese increíble final... … Mi año de descanso y relajación, de Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation). Un final de un libro de una mujer poco conocida... que (me) recuerda al libro "El hombre del salto”, un libro de un hombre muy conocido: Don DeLillo. Leí el libro de DeLillo hace tiempo, en castellano (me lo regalaron así: serían los Reyes, que a VECES tienen fallos de este calibre), con lo que leí fue la “visión” de Ramón Buenaventura. ...y, comparado con el de Moshfegh, no resiste el embiste, si se me pregunta a mí. He leído el libro "Mi año de descanso y relajación", de Ottessa Moshfegh [en realidad yo he leído "My Year of Rest and Relaxation"] y me ha impresionado: El poso que te deja este libro no tiene nada que ver con el brebaje de Don, que apenas deja poso... …no deja el mismo poso, pese a ser una estupenda novela, puede que “la mejor novela de DeLillo”, según pone en la solapa: Hay más de una década de distancia entre las dos novelas y hay muchas diferencias. El título de la novela de Don parece ser (y es) explícito, mientras que el título de la novela de Ottessa no se aprecia el “11-S” para nada, si bien es esencial en la conclusión de la novela… Dicen de la novela de Don que es su mejor obra: de ser así tendré que hablar con mi amigo Dictino que me recomendó muy encarecidamente “UNDERWORLD” [junto con “LA MUERTE DE VIRGILIO”, de Hermann Broch y “LA CREACIÓN DEL MUNDO”, de Miguel Torga: palabras mayores Las TRES, impresionante y bellísima esta última -que leí en el original portugués-]. el último capítulo: Así empieza el octavo y último capítulo de la novela. Lo sabe quien haya leído el libro: “ON SEPTEMBER11, I went out and bought a new TV/VCR at Best Buy so I could record the news coverage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers.” Más adelante, el lector sabe que el “Falling man” en este caso es la “Falling woman”: “Each time I see the woman leap off the Seventy-eighth floor of the North Tower - one high-heeled shoe slipping off and hovering up over her, the other stuck on her foot as though it were too small…”. [Nota entre paréntesis: ese as though es el cuadragésimo segundo y último caso del libro.] No solo sabemos que es una mujer, sino que su nombre es Reva, su amiga, que por fin había conseguido una “promoción” en su trabajo y la habían trasladado al World Trade Center: “– I am overcome by awe, not because she looks like Reva, and I think it’s her, almost exactly her, and not because Reva and I had been friends, or because I’ll never see her again, but because she is beautiful. There she is, a human being, diving into unknown, and she is wide awake.” (End of the story. End of the book, on page 289). Increíble final que asombra a Leila Guerriero y a cualquiera… sobre todo si lo hace al haber leído las páginas anteriores y no porque lo lea como “cita” en su columna (o en la mía, si llamamos a este rosario de palabras con esa denominación). Ya sabemos cómo termina la novela de Ottessa. Va siendo hora de poner fin a nuestro relato. P-R-E-C-I-O-S-O

This is by far the best read of my year 2022-2023! This is dark, funny and insightful. The way it is written is so spéciale et délicieux, vraiment j'adore!! I found myself laughing out loud multiple times!! So sarcastic and witty! Dear fellow readers I totally recommend. Please give it a try!! Love you.

ending was ok