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

dark reflective 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

4.5

I completely understand why people wouldn't like this book. Nothing really happens, all of the characters are unlikeable, the chapters are way too long (if that's something other people care about), and it's repetitive on both a large and small scale. I, however, enjoyed it anyways. I'm much more into character driven novels than I am plot-driven, and there was certainly no real plot to this - just an overly privileged woman, her depression, and the few insufferable people in her life. This was definitely more of a character study than anything else, which I liked, despite hating the character being studied. 

The commentary on privilege - especially when you reach the end of the novel - is subtle but effective. The ability to quit your job and abandon your life just to sleep for a whole year and never worry about how the bills will get paid and expect your life to be completely changed after the year is up and have all of your mental illness vanish.
And it 'works'. She wakes up after the year is over feeling like she is a changed person, but she's not. She's still the same vain narcissist one year later and that is punctuated with the final, one page chapter and her comment on the beauty of a woman who is falling to her death. As if it's that easy to do away with mental illness. Brilliant. I know people have commented saying the last chapter referring to 9/11 was insensitive, but that was obviously the point. To point out that the narrator saw herself as a changed person - a better person - after her year of sleep, but to look at such a tragedy and only think about looks, it shows she's the exact same person as she's always been. That the only thing that's changed is her attitude, which shows the way that privilege functions.


Anyways, definitely not a book for everybody, but I enjoyed it. 
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