This review contains spoilers for My Year of Rest and Relaxation.
I have been trying to get back into contemporary books and I figured that one of the most talked about books on the internet should be the way to get back into the genre. The only things I knew about this book before going into it was that a twenty-something woman was seeking to hibernate for a year through medications, to make it as though she was sleeping through life. Both of her parents passed away within weeks of each other, and with the inheritance from them, our narrator is able to continue to live a lavish life while on her hibernation journey.
This is certainly not an upbeat novel, and the narrator is anything but enjoyable -- she is insufferable and infuriating, yet I could not stop turning the pages. Moshfegh will have you captivated by her eccentric way of thinking and outlook on life as she navigates her year of sleep aided by pharmaceutics and designer jean hauls. We constantly see her blacking out for days on end when trying new medications, and she comes back to consciousness with receipts and packages of designer clothes and Victoria's Secret lingerie that she has no intention of wearing.
While we never learn the name of our blonde female lead, we certainly learn the most intimate details of her life, whether it be the death of her parents, the way she sleeps in the closet at her art gallery job, the on-again-off-again sex life she has with Trevor, or her one-sided friendship with Reva. For crying out loud, after she is fired from the art gallery, we have to read about her defecating on the floor in front of an art installation.
She knows that Reva needs her more than she needs Reva, yet she cannot seem to detach herself from the girl who buys fake designer handbags and compares herself to the narrator in what appears to be a never-ending cycle of Reva being vulnerable, the narrator gobbling down pills, watching discount movies on VCR, and experiencing the most bizarre interactions someone can have.
We are exposed to every minute detail of her existence, except of course, when she begins to lose days at a time thanks to the world's worst psychiatrist, Dr. Tuttle. She was the only psychiatrist to answer the phone at nearly midnight, and seems to have a supply of sample pills that never runs out. As our narrator is on her journey to sleep, Dr. Tuttle seems to be on a journey to to simply hand out the strangest advice known to man.
I do wish that we got to see more of Dr. Tuttle towards the end of the book and prior to the narrator's "art installation" project with Ping Xi. Her initial distain for him after seeing his first show at the art gallery soon proved to be useful to her in order to complete her year of sleep. I found myself constantly wondering on what Dr. Tuttle was thinking regarding her treatment and all of the medications that she was on. We know that this psychiatrist should basically have her license revoked, yet every scene with her had me more intrigued on her thought process, and I can only imagine what she would have thought of the narrator's approach to sleeping for a year.
The ending of this book really felt like you got hit in the face with a brick -- I could tell that this event was going to take place, based on the fact that it was New York in 2000 to 2001, but I have to say I did not expect Reva to meet such a cruel fate. I felt as though Reva's death opened the narrator's eyes in the sense that you could be living as much as could every day and suddenly have it taken away. Compared to Reva's vibrant way of living, the narrator would be hoping that pills would keep her consciousness at bay long enough that she barely had to live.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a blunt and eccentric dive into a woman’s desire to sleep for a year, riddled with a number of characters that not only drive her further into sleep, but finally awaken her.
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