September Book Club: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is one of the most unique novels I have ever read. It follows a young, beautiful, wealthy yet severely depressed woman who believes that undergoing a year of drug-induced sleep will enable her to re-enter the world as a new woman with a clean slate.

The narrative voice was refreshing because of its sharpness, cynicism and shock value. There were some truly grotesque moments told in a matter-of-fact tone, a juxtaposition which served the story nicely as it helped to portray the protagonist’s extreme level of desensitisation. At times, she felt almost un-human - her ability to endure so much sleep while desiring little else, her lack of empathy and care towards others (including those closest to her), et cetera. She is somewhat zombified. I wonder if her lack of humanity is the reason Moshfegh decided to leave her nameless?

The narrator’s point of view is rather interesting, and her personality is layered with much complexity: she is extremely beautiful yet rarely uses this to her advantage; she doesn’t have many hobbies or goals; she is unashamed of her grossness; she is aggressively judgemental and hateful; she is seriously depressed and lonely.

Is the protagonist sympathetic?

To an extent, there is an underlying sympathetic quality to the protagonist. We see through flashbacks that she was emotionally neglected by her parents and had to witness her mother’s alcoholism and father’s death. Her year of rest and relaxation is partially a way for her to grieve her parents and whatever comfort she found in her childhood. Overall, though, I found her quite difficult to feel sorry for. I didn’t feel we got to see enough of her past or her soft side to really feel connected to her, and also she was just a horrible person. Out of all her negative qualities, for me her worst flaw was her treatment of her 'best friend', Reva.

Reva

Reva was probably my favourite character in this book, and I often found myself wishing to see things from her perspective. I wondered why she stayed close to the protagonist despite how selfish and judgemental she was. Throughout the novel, the narrator showed Reva very little love, including when she was experiencing deep emotional traumas. She was also judged intensely by the narrator, mostly shown through internal monologue. The vile thoughts she had towards her own best friend upset me significantly and I also wondered why she stayed friends with Reva if she ‘hated’ her so much. She described their relationship like this:

(p166): "Seeing Reva in full-blown Reva mode both delighted and disgusted me. Her repression, her transparent denial, her futile attempts to tap into the pain with me in the car, it all satisfied me somehow. Reva scratched at an itch that, on my own, I couldn't reach. Watching her take what was deep and real and painful and ruin it by expressing it with such trite precision gave me reason to think Reva was an idiot, and therefore I could discount her pain, and with it, mine. Reva was like the pills I took. They turned everything, even hatred, even love, into fluff I could bat away. And that was exactly what I wanted - my emotions passing like headlights that shine softly through a window, sweep past me, illuminate something vaguely familiar, then fade and leave me in the dark again."

What I took from this paragraph is that the narrator is at once jealous of Reva for her ability to express and process her emotions, and resentful towards her own lack of ability to do the same. There is also the implication that Reva serves a greater purpose in the protagonist's life: aside from being her friend, she is also functional in the sense that she, like pills, makes the protagonist's woes feel slightly less serious. Reva is a good distraction and that's about it.

But the ever-loyal Reva continues to show up at the protagonist’s apartment to check in, hang out, take out the trash, remind her to do something healthy, et cetera. I just couldn’t help feeling that Reva deserved a much better friend, somebody who cared at all about her dying mother, her failing affair and her bulimia. It was hard to see so many of Reva’s problems go unaided, and the ending she got was just terrible, perhaps my biggest issue with the book.

Ending and Final Thoughts

Wow, the ending of this book really did grate on me. I found it, especially the final page, extremely jarring. By the end of the book, virtually nothing had happened. No progress had been made, no epiphany had been had, no lesson had been learnt. The narrator took her year of sleep and then emerged feeling better, just like she predicted. Where was the moral of the story?

I understand that Moshfegh was deliberately writing a novel with no payoff and no real character development and no self-explanation. The novel simply details a woman's experience of sleep, drugs and hatred for everything and everyone in the world, and that is it. Thought this was the point, I am frustrated that I wasn't able to take more away from this book. I have to admit, I was expecting the narrator to realise she had to do some actual work on herself and then become better as a person as a result.

Instead, she processed absolutely nothing from her past, lost Trevor and didn't care, lost Reva and barely cared either, insinuating that even after her year-long journey she was still just as uninvested in her own life. She watched Reva's death on tv when she was BORED. And I couldn't get over the fact that the last thing she ever thought about Reva was that she was beautiful. So, achieve your bulimic goals and you'll be admired for being beautiful when you die???

Maybe I'm completely off but I just could not fathom the last page of the book and it actually infuriated me. Reva really deserved better. On my bookstagram account, I rated this book 3 stars because I enjoyed a lot of it before I grew to dislike it, but upon further reflection, I think it should be a 2.5, because I ended up liking as much of it as I disliked. Though the writing is great, I definitely do not understand the hype and this was a very disappointing read overall.

Rating: 2.5/5.