My Year of Rest and Relaxation

By: Ottessa Moshfegh

Narrated by: Julia Whelan

Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Amazon,Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible

A New York Times Bestseller

“One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh’s] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.”—Vogue

From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes.

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

©2018 Ottessa Moshfegh (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“I don't think I'm ever going to get over Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation.”—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

“Ottessa Moshfegh is easily the most interesting contemporary American writer on the subject of being alive when being alive feels terrible. She has a freaky and pure way of accessing existential alienation, as if her mind were tapped directly into the sap of some gnarled, secret tree. . . . Watching Moshfegh turn her withering attention to the gleaming absurdities of pre-9/11 New York City, an environment where everyone except the narrator seems beset with delusional optimism, horrifically carefree, feels like eating bright, slick candy—candy that might also poison you.”—Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker

“Darkly comic and ultimately profound new novel. . . . Moshfegh’s extraordinary prose soars as it captures her character’s re-engagement.”—Vendela Vida, New York Times Book Review

Better than I thought

This author loves to write in lists but it works for its existentialist approach to the novel. The ending was a little abrupt but overall, it was very good. The life of a depressed 23 year old New Yorker seemed like a new and engaging topic, especially for today's millennials who have everything so easy, except for connection with authority figures or solid role models. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants something new to read.

Boring stories of a depressed narcissist

I don't think I have ever hated book until now. It is just pages and pages of the main character being self obsessed and nasty to other people. She manipulates her psychiatrist into giving her every drug on Gods green earth, and then basically sleeps or is trying to sleep the entire book.

Vapid Woman Lives on Sleep

Sometimes life makes you want to run away, go home, put on a pair of PJS and not leave until you have to. This book is an exploration of how a woman successfully disappears and refuses to participate in “life” for a year. She systematically prepares her days for as much sleep as possible. The main character is wealthy, skinny, and quite tragic. While I thoroughly enjoyed this performance, I couldn’t enjoy the story. It seemed vapid and lacking in details. Understandably, the idea of this book is about living in the void – there was something else missing. Overall, I would suggest this book, but know there is not a lot going on in terms of storyline.

Fantastically bleak, should be a classic

There's something unique about listening to this title under quarantine - I decided to read this book after someone made a joke wanting to go "full My Year of Rest & Relaxation" while NYC was on lockdown. "My Year of Rest & Relaxation" is a story about a twenty-something WASP elite in the heart of New York City in 2000 who decides that she will sleep for an entire year. The premise alone for this story by the brilliant Ottessa Moshfegh pulled me in, but what made this novel so fantastic was it's incredibly ability to represent a certain place in time - New York City before 9/11. There's something special about writers who can capture a locale & everything that it represents in their writing as well as Moshfegh does here.

The characterization here is also a gem - we learn about Reva, her "friend" (question mark?) who is constantly coming over to our in-story narrator's apartment, as well as Dr. Tuttle, the wacky pill mill doc who keeps her stuffed full of sedatives. These characters are incredibly three-dimensional and nuanced, an incredible accomplishment by Moshfegh given how the limited perspective we see these characters through is very distant and antisocial.

There's a lot to talk about regarding the themes here - ideas regarding the corrosive nature of high-minded bourgeoise social circles, our narrators extremely negative attitude towards men - but the concept I found most refreshing in this audiobook was how the in-story narrator's past trauma is not necessarily implied to be the cause of her decision to sleep for a year, but rather it's the totality of the cruel world we live in that have put her the position she is in. In this sense, we see her pain not as the result of specific interactions she has had, but the only logical conclusion of the society she is in; this contrasts with the dominant way depressed characters tend to get represented in literature.

You might see the ending on this one a mile away, but this one definitely gets bonus points for a great ending. Also, bonus points go to Julia Whelen for a great voiceover here - she does a great job keeping the handful of female characters here very distinct.

Unputdownable

I heard about this book in a tweet. I started it today and could not stop, except to make a pot of soup, and later to pour a glass of wine. I laughed aloud. I seared with anger toward the men in the story. I tried to empathize. I am grateful for having read this book.

In the moment

Julia Whelan inhabited this character embedding herself first in the decadent decline to depression, misery then through the determined desire for rebirth or death. Ms Moshfegh sees the eccentricities , physical and psychological under high powered analytical microscopy. The main character, privileged and educated, lives a superficial unrewarding and gradually recedes into a self imposed drug mediated solitary confinement. There are few other characters, a troubled Emotionally disturbed young woman, a self absorbed boyfriend and a popular artist whose work is lauded by a recognized few art critics. Each is lacking an aspect of humanity and compassion reminding me of distorted charicatures Dorothy’s companions on he road to find the Wizard.

This story will not appeal to everyone. It’s painful and self indulgent, necessities for portraying the protagonist. This author posses a unique vision our weird world and its inhabitants and finds beauty none the less.

Review

I love the way Julia Whelan reads stories. I’ve started searching for books read by her because she does it so well. This story was great. It started slow - The privilege, complaining, and downright meanness of the protagonist became irritating to me and I almost stopped listening. I’m so glad I pushed through because it got better. I actually ended really enjoying this story. It’s the kind of story that sticks with you for days after reading it.

Ottessa Moshfegh is something else

I am endlessly fascinated by the author. I keep reading her even though I am often disappointed in the overall span of her novels. This is no exception. I loved it except I hated it. I listened compulsively but kept wondering when something was going to "happen." I would say the first hour or so and the last hour or so redeem the middle, and spectacularly so, but there is some slogging to do, and some frustrations with the unlikeability of the protagonist (and not in a love-to-hate kind of way; just in a this-is-not-someone-I-would-ever-say-a-word-to-in-real-life kind of way). I'm confused. High rating but a bit of a drudge.

Second Favorite on Audible

This audiobook is my second favorite purchase from Audible. It’s a bit strange and maybe not for everyone, but I absolutely loved it. The voice is excellent as is the reader. Highly recommend!

Narrator is incredibly good.

Best narration I've ever heard. I need another ten words, so these are just filler.