This novel’s premise — a woman decides she needs a year off her life to sleep — doesn’t exactly sound thrilling.
Still, I started Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” with high expectations — it’s one of the most requested books this summer.
One hour of reading turned to two turned to three. This book isn’t just buzzy and maniacally entertaining — it’s a mean-spirited, tenderhearted masterpiece.
A small cast of characters — a needy best friend, god-awful banker bro ex-boyfriend and a criminally neglect kooky psychiatrist — orbit the novel’s unnamed anti-heroine.
The action is mostly confined to the couch of her Upper East Side apartment, where the narrator attempts to blot herself out of existence on a pharmacopeia of Ambiens, Haldols, Seconals and lithium.
She lives a secret second life in her blackout states, ordering lingerie, designer jeans and making appointments for spa visits.
“It seemed that while I was sleeping some superficial part of me was taking aim at a life of beauty and sex appeal,” she writes.
At some point the drugs don’t work — and she’s out of the heavy stuff. “Two Benadryl was a joke. Like blowing a snot rocket at a forest fire. Like trying to tame a lion by sending it a postcard.”
I finished the book in two unsettling nights. Reading about her pursuit of everlasting sleep easily came before my need to get the requisite eight hours.
