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A review by marymayne
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
4.0
A very strange book. I enjoyed it, could relate to some parts, found others funny and some absurd.
I have settled on interpreting it as a parody of how your brain works when you're mentally ill. If only you had a year to catch up on sleep and change everything about yourself, then you could come back better and beautiful and rich and be fixed and have no problems or shortcomings again ever.... then you read the main character doing it and see how it doesn't actually solve anything -then the absurd ending where she sleeps for 4 months straight as an art piece then has an epiphany on her last sleep and is fixed! And she can go out in the world and forget about the whole thing. Yes that is how it would have to happen ~ if you don't put in the work to get better you'll just stay the same unless there is some medically induced divine intervention.
The 9/11 part was weird. I don't really understand why that was included, and it was so obvious from the moment it's set in NYC in the year 2000 that 9/11 will be a plot point. Then Reva gets a job in the Twin Towers..... I didn't think that added anything .
I have settled on interpreting it as a parody of how your brain works when you're mentally ill. If only you had a year to catch up on sleep and change everything about yourself, then you could come back better and beautiful and rich and be fixed and have no problems or shortcomings again ever.... then you read the main character doing it and see how it doesn't actually solve anything -
The 9/11 part was weird. I don't really understand why that was included, and it was so obvious from the moment it's set in NYC in the year 2000 that 9/11 will be a plot point. Then Reva gets a job in the Twin Towers..... I didn't think that added anything
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Death of parent, Drug abuse, and Mental illness
Moderate: Suicide
Minor: Abortion