Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - Mein Jahr der Ruhe und Entspannung

“There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.”

So, I hated this. The only reason I didn’t DNF is because my friends were reading it with me, but trust me I really wanted to. And I never DNF a book. I understand exactly what the author was trying to do with this book. I get it. I just think it was executed poorly and I didn’t like it. The character is unlikeable on purpose, but not even in an entertaining way. If you’re gonna make your protagonist unlikeable, it has to mean something. Nothing happened in this book. It was super repetitive and gave so many unnecessary details that I almost fell asleep many times while reading. Maybe it gave an accurate representation of the monotony of depression? But was that enough to interest me? Nope. The sarcasm and humor in this book was funny at times, but most of the time it really really wasn’t. It felt like when someone says they have dark humor, but really they just say a bunch of offensive things for the sake of shock value. Nothing about the plot (what little there was of it) was shocking. Some of the “jokes” were shocking, but they were ultimately just unfunny. They weren’t even funny in an ironic way. The ending was very rushed disappointing. I didn’t care about a single thing in the book and I’m glad it’s over.

“Favorite” Quotes:

“I wanted to hold on to the house the way you’d hold on to a love letter. It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world.”

“Die young and leave a beautiful corpse.”

“She wasn’t resting. She was not in a state of peace. She was in no state, not being. The peace to be had, I thought, watching them pull the sheet over her head, was mine.”

“Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion.”

“I was the vacant, repressed depressive, and she was the obsessive blabbermouth, always knocking on my door, asking random questions, looking for any excuse to talk.”

“And that was exactly what I wanted—my emotions passing like headlights that shine softly through a window, sweep last me, illuminate something vaguely familiar, then fade and leave me in the dark again.”

“My blind eye was the one real comfort I felt I could give her.”

“‘You’ve got friends, you’re alright, no matter what.’”

“‘Sometimes friends are better than family, because you can say anything. Nobody gets mad. It’s a different kind of love.’”

“…there was stability in living in the past.”

“What would come later would be only sort remembrances of the thing called love she used to give me.”

Content Warnings

ella_mai_46's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

amazing book, but very slow paced and quite long.

Content Warnings

imrereads's review against another edition

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I just couldn't find it in me to care after one to many lines or fat shaming, antisemitism, and homophobia.

Content Warnings

rebeccahensley's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

samarakroeger's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

let the record show that I HATED this book. And I generally like plotless books about sad, somewhat unlikeable women in their 20s...

This book was such a slog to get through, especially the middle. It truly put me to sleep better than any of the myriad of sleeping pills featured in (and weirdly endorsed by) this book and put me in a reading slump.

I got the sense that Ottessa Moshfegh was trying to make this book as provocative as possible (which it definitely was, I just don't really vibe with that approach). The casual racism, ableism, sexism, and homophobia served no purpose except to solidify my intense dislike for both Moshfegh and our vile, unfeeling narrator. I've never read a book before where I hated every single character with every fiber of my being. Reva did deserve a better friend despite her personal flaws.

The reason I gave this 1.5 stars instead of 1 is because Dr. Tuttle is so ridiculous and unhinged she became funny to me - i.e. "I've heard from several esteemed colleagues in Brazil that regular Infermiterol use can activate a profound tectonic displacement. Followed up with some filigree work using low doses of aspirin and astral projecting, it's proven to be quite effective in curing solipsistic terror...". After slogging through the 70 page middle chapter (ugh), the last two real chapters (can't count that cheap last paragraph) were alright (in comparison).

This was so incredibly privileged and pretentious and filled with so many triggers for mental illness I have no idea why people liked this book. I was even more disappointed in this book due to all the positive hype I'd seen about it, so I'd definitely recommend reading the trigger warnings and thinking about why you want to read this absurd, pointless book before you pick it up.

Content Warnings

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