Hello, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is screwed up, so weird, and sits uncomfortably lodged in your throat, but that is why I loved it. Before I get too ahead of myself
- I thought that the writing was fantastic. Ottessa Moshfegh excellently draws you into such a specific time and place without you being aware of her coloring in details as you read.
- The premise itself is interesting– the narrator is doggedly yet lethargically trying to figure out a way to sleep her current self away so she can wake up fresh and clean as a new person. Such a narrow focus in plot allows for in-depth character building and an impending sense of doom that keeps you engaged.
- It’s brimming with discussion points — from the relationships the narrator has to the ending to narrator’s larger and smaller motivations– there is so much to talk about.
Yet the reason I ended up loving this book was there is a specific feeling Moshfegh captures, and if you’ve ever felt it before it’s a little disturbing how weirdly relatable this book feels: That fervent desire to have your soul scrubbed clean and wake up with a whole new inside. In a way reading this book felt like it– you’re being plunged further and further into this swampy mess and when you finally close the book there’s at least a fresh minty candle lit in the middle of the swamp making you feel the possibility of being refreshed.
Other things that lingered:
The narrator has an odd sense of self-awareness — she is completely aware of her privilege of class and looks. Someone suggests she burns her birth certificate and cuts up her license and passport and she shoots back that she was born into privilege — why would she get rid of that? She is thin and blonde and attractive and she recognizes how she was able to coast in school as a result of it. Yet when it comes to examining her relationships she seems either incapable/afraid to give them a real honest look. I don’t want to say unwilling to give them a real honest look, because she *tries* but doesn’t seem to want to go beyond scratching the surface.
I REALLY want to know what the Egyptians at the bodega thought of her.
I don’t want to be any more specific, but there were some moments of beautiful let downs.
While *drastically* different, it has a similar sense of feeling to Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, where everything feels a little off and you’re absorbed into the stickiness of the unfiltered state of being a human.
Read My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh if you’re looking for something a little more experimental/different, want meaty complex situations + characters, want a book that you are going to react to, and are looking for skilled writing!
Jenny Likes Books 