My Year of Rest and Relaxation

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a novel by Ottessa Moshfegh that was published in 2018. The book tells the story of a young woman named unnamed narrator who decides to take a year off from her life and spend it in a self-induced drug-induced hibernation. Throughout the book, she seeks to escape from her past, her emotions, and the realities of the world around her.

The story is set in New York City in the early 2000s, just before the September 11 attacks. The unnamed narrator is a young woman in her mid-twenties who is struggling to find meaning in her life. She has a job in an art gallery, but she finds the work unfulfilling and her relationships with men unsatisfying. She is estranged from her parents, and her only friend is her college roommate, Reva.

One day, the narrator decides that she needs a break from her life. She quits her job, cuts off contact with Reva, and finds a psychiatrist who prescribes her a cocktail of drugs that will allow her to sleep for extended periods of time. She begins to spend her days sleeping and her nights watching old movies and taking more drugs.

As the year progresses, the narrator's mental and physical health deteriorate. She becomes more isolated and her drug use becomes more extreme. She has disturbing dreams and hallucinations, and her grip on reality begins to slip. However, despite all of this, she is committed to her plan to spend the year in hibernation, and she refuses to give up on it.

Throughout the book, the narrator struggles with her emotions and her past. She has unresolved issues with her parents, particularly her mother, who died of cancer when she was a teenager. She also has a complicated relationship with men, and she often finds herself in emotionally abusive relationships. Her drug use, in part, is an attempt to escape from these painful memories and emotions.

As the book nears its end, the narrator's year of rest and relaxation comes to an abrupt end. She wakes up from her drug-induced sleep to discover that the world has changed in her absence. The attacks of September 11 have occurred, and the world is a different and more dangerous place. Despite this, the narrator finds a way to move forward, to reconnect with Reva, and to face the world and her emotions head-on.

Overall, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful and haunting book that explores themes of isolation, trauma, and the struggle to find meaning in life. It is a deeply personal book that is both challenging and rewarding to read. Moshfegh's writing is spare and precise, and she captures the numbness and detachment of the narrator's drug-induced state with an almost clinical accuracy. The book is not for everyone, but for those who are willing to dive deep into the narrator's psyche, it is a rewarding and thought-provoking experience.