Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Il mio anno di riposo e oblio

I never thought I'd find a someone who needs proper therapy more than me but I've been proven wrong. So much yet so little happened. It was a really accurate depiction of depression. As someone who's experienced almost exactly what the main character has, I can sympathise with her although she's not very likeable. The main star was definitely her best friend.

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fboschetti's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.75

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chilicrispy's review against another edition

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2.75

I would sincerely like a review with quotes from someone who loved this book. Maybe I have just had enough white nonsense in my life. But this book really did not deliver form me. I wish we dug more into the main characters' relationships so we could understand her decision for her year of rest and relaxation. The concept of sleeping for a year is interesting but the delivery was lacking.

The character was antisemitism, fatphobic, and made SA, jokes. It was extremely off putting and didn't serve a purpose (aka lead to personal growth or comment on larger world issues). I understand Moshfeg is trying to write a complicated character that is the antithesis to what we think a woman should be, but it isn't necessarily a skill to make some one despicable. The character was pretty one note which seems like the opposite of the authors intentions. Perhaps I wasn't big brain enough, but I think there are better books about female introspection. Definitely check the content warnings.

On the pro side it was a cool concept, the writing style was snappy and did a good job of putting you in her world (sometimes to the reader's discomfort). There were some clever funny moments that I appreciated. It is clear Moshfeg is a very talented writer! I don't think her genre of books is necessarily for me.

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cashleigh98's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-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

I see a lot of comparisons to the Bell Jar, but to me, this is Dostoevsky through and through-- a modern re-telling of Notes from the Underground. Instead of an unhinged man who hides from the world in the dank despair of his low socio-economic status, we see a woman who could only be afforded the opportunity to convalesce alone in her NYC apartment with an arsenal of psycho-active medication due to an extremely large sum from family inheritance. She is an orphan who has been subjected and subjects herself to the worst mankind has to offer, and she in turn withdraws from society entirely. I can't say that I blame her. Of course, it's a critique of the pharmaceutical industrial complex, a critique of the upper-class (her mother is a self-involved alcoholic housewife who overdoses purposefully shortly after the illness and eventual death of her husband), and it's a critique of a city whose culture is to turn away from unpleasantness and not acknowledge individuals (I'll get back to this in a second). In a way, our narrator mirrors the same trajectory of her mother, sinking so into the addictions and obsession with never being sober and awake through her life and living outside of your own existence that I was sure throughout the book that she was going to end up dead by the end of this book. That being said, the ending swept me off my feet and surprised, intrigued, and angered me.

I do think a huge part of this novel was a critique of the social structure in NYC. This is 2001, so one could not even make the argument that social media has changed the culture of connecting with others in-person. The only technology present was a flip phone and a VCR. The narrator slept on and off and on for nearly a year, and there was not one person in the whole city of eight million people who raised a question about whether she was doing okay. Not her doorman, not the Armenians outside of the bodega she frequents (even as they witness her decline), not the company who came to pick up her laundry in the first couple of months. No one except Reva, who is constant fodder for our narrator's negative attitude and condescension towards the middle-class. Reva's character in some ways reminds me of the conversations around Caroline Calloway because she always gets hate for being candid about wanting to be richer and more famous because she wants to live in the upper echelon of society, but it's seen as vulgar and uncouth to desperately want to be a part of that world and covet what they have, even though almost everyone on the earth would love to be a part of that world.

I think what Moshfegh accomplishes best is allowing you to connect and empathize with someone who is so deeply troubled and whose experiences and background are so far removed from our own (hopefully). Something truly and deeply sad will happen such as before Reva's mother's funeral, the narrator wants desperately to sleep but can't so she starts remembering her own mother and family life which is goddamn bone-chillingly sad. We feel compassion for the woman who grew up in a house where love from your parents was a vague entity that was neither tangible nor important to either of her parents. Everyone was cold and distant and tolerant of each other. Fucking sad. Then we learn about <spolier> the sexual harassment by a family friend after her father's death. Every time you think it won't get worse-- it always does. But then, pages later, Moshfegh reminds you what a fucking bitch the narrator is, usually using Reva as a punching bag and by criticizing her looks or her personality or her never-receding presence and attempts at loyalty and friendship. She wants us to empathize and then rips away our ability to empathize. The core premise of wanting to escape your own life because you're just so dissatisfied in a way that's hard to put a finger on is something I think everyone has felt to some degree, and yet she makes the narrator so unlikable that we don't really want to relate to her. We want to think she's not worth it, perhaps she's too far gone. Every assumption you make during this book, Moshfegh breaks it and taunts you with it. Actually, our narrator was right all along and you can press the hard reset on your life if you pop pills, lock yourself in your apartment with no furniture or activities, and convalesce alone for six months. Moshfegh threads paradoxes and contradictions together and divides them, simultaneously. She creates the line between the relatable and the dislikable and creates a character who walks the line like an elephant on a tightrope, and I think her ability to pull off this story with minimal dialogue, repetitive action, and essentially no plot speaks to the power and skill of her prose.

There is no argument to be made for Moshfegh being a bad writer. There was not a word that could have been cut, no areas that should have been edited, and no dialogue or aspects that should have been included but were not. I will go to the trenches to defend the articulate structure and careful prose with metaphors and through-lines that make reading this feel hyper-real and surreal at the same time. There were times of high action (Reva's mother's funeral) and then the monotony of living an average boring existence where you want the whole thing to be over with already. I have literally not one critique about this book.

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marns20_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad fast-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

Honestly? This is the most UNHINGED book I’ve ever read and probably will ever read??? but I loved it sooo much and I can’t even tell you why. Every 5 pages I literally said ‘Wtaf’ to myself out loud. It’s truly bizarre, in the best way. There were so many moments that you couldn’t help but laugh that had me thinking omg am I crazy too, I definitely shouldn’t be laughing at that. Her perplexing friendship with Reva was my favourite thing to read. The complex feeling of loving someone but not liking them, your friendship evolving past having nothing in common anymore because you have both grown separately yet you are still inextricably linked by history alone, not being able to let them go even though they’re no good for you and vice versa.

The weird candid way she describes her parents and her relationship with them throws you off balance because she says really deep and personal things but in a detached, emotionless way that keeps you at arms length almost like when someone is crying but they don’t want you to hug or comfort them and you just stand there awkwardly staring at them. As unrelatable as the main character is (white, rich, privileged) her experience of the lethargy and apathy towards life was very relatable. Her crazy experiment is probably something we have all wished we could do at some point. I know I have. At parts, I found myself desperately rooting for her experiment to work, for her to be able to pull herself out of her despair and then other times you really couldn’t ignore what a truly terrible person she was, terrible friend she was. This struck a chord thinking about how mental health affects your relationships, your inability to show up or want to show up for people, it makes you irritable and mean, only willing to do the bare minimum despite how much you hate it or how much you love them. The complex nature of the human condition

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