Book Review: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

RACHEL SOO THOW - 26 APR 2021

Yes, I have to admit I was definitely late to the book party/ YouTube/bookstagram world on this one but goddamn this was delightful in its own self-induced and ‘privileged’ way. Consequently after googling the difference between a nap and a sleep (and by the way, I will still stand by the fact that my 2 hour head-down-on-pillow time is indeed a nap in my eyes), this novel just seemed perfect for the long weekend. Taking place in New York over a period of 15 months, the novel follows a twenty-something art history graduate who quits her job after the death of her parents only to be submerged in a world of sedatives, therapy and the Home Shopping Network in a bid to achieve round-the-clock sleep unperturbed.

This self-induced ‘coma’ seems to be an ode to the art world - a performance piece crying for inner peace and an awakening of the soul and the spirit. Moshfegh has successfully captured the raw and vigoured nature of a life overly consumed by prescription psycho-pharmaceuticals: the inability of the mind and ‘privilege’ in this context stems from the relief from the responsibility to acknowledge the existence of others. The constant emotional abandonment weighs heavily on one hand whilst the vindictive nature of friendship teeters on the other. Moshfegh almost shines a light on our own standards and values - as we feel abandoned by one another in relationships, sadly, simple acts such as sex become portrayed as vile and evidence of our incompetence in associating our emotions with such simple acts of intimacy. While we laugh and turn away at awkward moments in the novel, we subsequently feel a sense of ‘disgust’ - most possibly in the language but subconsciously an evaluation of our own lives and the emotional dissociations we share with others.

“ I can’t point to any one event that resulted in my decision to go into hibernation. Initially, I just wanted some downers to drown out my thoughts and judgments, since the constant barrage made it hard not to hate everyone and everything.”

As the narrator nears her goal of 24/7 slumber with the aid of a performance painter (infamous for splatter canvases made with his own semen - *eyeroll* - the art world ay), the novel becomes less about the catalogue of pills and labels and slows right down to displaced grief and trauma. A reflection of one’s self is called into question and what was once a comically brutal narrative becomes anything but. You could say in a way, Moshfegh has written an adult fable - one filled with gender injustice, prejudice, alcohol and drug abuse, abandonment and varying definitions of love, and in a way the ending was a great exposé on sociological taxonomy and its ability to painfully bring up feelings of regret, existential angst, depression and self-deprecation. The minimisation of feelings and memories (“lame memories”) is what makes this such a heartbreaking novel, so many paragraphs and phrases resonated with feelings I’ve felt myself from time to time, and the chemical annihilation is raw.

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