A review by sarahesterman
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

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

3.75

I knew My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh was going to be pretty fucking weird going into it. You see, I did my due diligence, read some reviews, and planned accordingly. 

Given that, I can tell you straight out that if you have depression or suicidal ideation: Take care of yourself and proceed (with the book and this review) with caution. 

The tl;dr is that the (very unlikable) narrator, who is privileged and slender and blonde and WASPy and hot—and tells the reader those things repeatedly—is supremely depressed but doesn’t have the words for that. It’s 2000, to be fair. (We’ve made great strides in de-stigmatizing mental health in the last 24 years, though we still have a ways to go.) Anyway, she gets it in her mind that all she needs is one solid year of sleep and then she’ll wake up a new person. Like continuous sleep. So she finds the world’s most irresponsible psychiatrist to get herself some drugs, and she tries to make it happen. 

Everybody is awful in this book—save for Reva, the unnamed narrator’s “best friend” (in quotes because she’s never treated well). Like no doubt Reva makes some poor choices, none of which made her unsympathetic to me. 

But the other characters we see suck. Dr. Tuttle is several lawsuits waiting to happen and is easily the worst person in this book, given how easily she hands out drugs to her clients. The narrator’s ex-boyfriend, Trevor, treats her poorly and SAs her (though the book doesn’t call it that). And Ping Xi, an artist she ends up associating with, is… something. 

When I picked up this book, I was looking for weird lit fic. I got it. While some things didn’t work for me—the ending was dissatisfying and the SA scene with Trevor honestly didn’t need to be there—the book did make me feel something. Namely, it made me feel relief that my depression has never been so bad I wanted to literally sleep a year away. 

Let’s be friends on threads and bookstagram. 
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