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A review by cashleigh98
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Vomit, Grief, and Death of parent