Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - Mi año de descanso y relajación

I dont understand the hype for this book. I feel like I remember people raving about this a few years ago but I truly found this whole book horribly depressing and meaningless. It gave Holden Caulfield vibes in the worst way.

I guess you could say its a feminist book representing women in the worst way, women can be horrible too, women contain multitudes. I'm also pretty positive it doesn't pass the reverse Bechdel test (men are rarely mentioned and only in reference to sex). Which I guess is interesting... idk overall I thought it was terribly boring and depressing.

The main character is in her 20s, both her parents have passed away which she says she has come to terms with but clearly still deeply affects her. She has decided she wants to sleep her life away. She goes to a bad therapist complaining of sleep problems so she can get prescribed increasingly wild drugs. She then takes a cocktail of drugs in efforts to fully sleep through the rest of life to varying success. Her therapist is an extremely hippie unhinged bad therapist, her best friend is extremely vain and fake, her deceased mother was an alcoholic and uncaring. Overall every single character was unbearable and annoying and I don't feel like I particularly learned or gained anything from reading it.

Content Warnings

genielong's review against another edition

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dark 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

2.0

Content Warnings

sophiemarie422's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

I think it's easy to write this book off as off as a superficial portrayal of a privileged sad women, but if you've ever struggled with very intense depression and given the options, I would have found myself in a similar position. It's not about class or race that would be reducing especially when you consider the author Otessa Moshfegh as a person and her other works. In a high pressure world where were consistently under each other's criticisms it's hard for me to imagine why somebody with her thought process would want to come to a world that would inevitably criticize and demean her one way or another. This isn't a defense of some of her very selfish acts in the books primarily towards her best friends, but rather the importance of the perspective the book brings to the table

Content Warnings