Thank you Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book.
I kept reading this book hoping it would redeem itself at some point and have some amazing epiphany at the end. But it didn't happen.
Basically the main character is a total jerk of a selfish person. Her life is sad and lonely, granted, but she refuses to get help and it's hard to feel bad for someone who doesn't need to work for a year and can still get by in New York no problem.
Also, there were a lot of passages where the narrator just lists medication. As in this happens over and over and the book might be half as long if you took out the names of sleep medication. Or the names of popular 80s and 90s movies which she also listed a lot. I think it was supposed to be punchy writing or something, but I just skipped it because who cares?
There was a lot of buildup to 9/11--the book started in 2000 in New York and you're told the MC is going to sleep for a year. Both her ex (who is the worst person imaginable and I had no comprehension for why she supposedly missed him so much she went into a crazy depressive episode) and her best friend end up working in the twin towers. I assumed it was going to be this big scene and she'd have this giant revelation about life. But it was literally a paragraph at the end, just this brief mention like "oh yeah and this happened" and it was such a let down.
So basically I didn't like much of anything about this book, unfortunately. I kept hoping I would find something good about it and I never did.

This is a book narrated by a very depressed and beautiful young woman who has graduated from college, works in an art gallery, and lives in New York, the year is 2001. She was recently lost both her parents, her father to cancer, and her mother close afterward from pills/alcohol. She also has an awful relationship with a man who is on again off again.
So... she decided she needs a year of rest, to just sleep for a year, consistently. She finds a psychiatrist who really is a horrible doctor, a pill pusher.. and gets everything she needs, more then she needs from her, and then we follow her through her journey ... along with her one friend Reva, a gal she was in college with and really the only friend mentioned besides the sometimes boyfriend.
Some of this is hilarious.... just a few laugh out loud moments, but the majority is very dark.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Press for the digital book.

"Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart - this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart know back then - that when I'd slept enough, I'd be okay. I'd be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation."

Unfiltered and utterly unapologetic, My Year of Rest and Relaxation kept my giggling and cringing the whole time.

Despite being beautiful, wealthy and thin our unnamed narrator finds herself depressed, anxious and unable to cope with the day-to-day of just being alive and awake. In order to continue living she decides to embark on a "year of rest and relaxation", her self-styled hibernation from the painful outside world and the even-more-painful thoughts running inside her head. Her goal is to be asleep for as much time as possible which she achieves with the help of  her prescription-happy and zany therapist and an endless loop of Whoopi Goldberg videotapes that she uses to lull herself into an unconscious oblivion.

I flew through this thing, despite having pretty much no plot to speak of I found it hard to put down. The book is written as though the narrative is within the mind of our main character and I really enjoyed her and her perspective. Her internal monologue is sharp, sarcastic and filled with dark humor and if that's your thing you will certainly love this read. Not all of this story is a walk in the park, after all our narrator is trying to be asleep all of the time for a reason but Ottessa handles these darker themes with great thought, tact and humor so even though the narrator might not be likeable in the traditional sense, I found her to be super relatable.

This book also perfectly captured New York City for me, having recently moved away I loved getting to dive back in for a bit. Set pre-9/11 in the year leading up to it I thought that Ottessa Moshfegh's subtle foreshadowing added an extra something to the story. I will say that this is decidedly not a 9/11 story and not centered around it at all.

This is a great novel and I'd highly recommend it to anyone that enjoys reflective stories, New York settings or dark humor!

It’s always a shock when I read a book and I really don’t enjoy it, then I come on to Goodreads and find that almost without exception it’s received 4 and 5* and glowing reviews. But that most certainly has happened here with this, to me, pointless and tedious self-indulgent and pretentious exploration of a young New York woman who decides she hasn’t much time for her privileged life and decides to hibernate for a year in a prescription drug induced stupor. Sleep, she believes, will solve her problems. Our unnamed narrator describes her every drug ingestion and its results, narrates her encounters with her unbelievably unpleasant boyfriend and chronicles her visits to her completely unbelievable psychiatrist. These visits to Dr Tuttle are, I assume meant to be amusing, but they’re so silly that they go beyond humour. The almost obligatory 9/11 reference is included, of course, tacked clumsily on to the end to little or no effect. Just what is the point of this book? Others have got a lot from it, it’s clear, but I fail to see why I should be interested in this waste-of-space young woman and her retreat from daily life.

I read the rave reviews on this one and wondered what the heck I missed?! I did not find it deep, nor powerful, nor profound. I found it to be narcissistic, shallow, and ultimately quite boring. This story follows a year where a young white woman, privileged and entitled, chooses to spend a year in her NYC apartment popping enough pills to put her to sleep for 365 days. Within this year, we see echoes of her past with both parents dying while she is at Columbia University (sorry, not a chance I believe this woman could have gotten into one of the most selective colleges in the country - completely unrealistic from the character development), a sad and pathetic job at an art gallery, hilarious conversations with a complete wackjob of a therapist who hands out drugs like candy, and a cruel and selfish so-called 'friendship' with another messed up young woman. I am sure I was supposed to feel sadness for the tragedies in their lives, but all I felt was contempt. I have read, and witnessed in real life, many tragedies (we all remember Jude in A Little Life), and I know what it is like to have my heart pummeled, to weep for the unfairness in life. I just attended a memorial service for a former student, cut down by cancer in the prime of his life; that is TRUE tragedy. Not this pathetic young woman's story. This was a total miss for me and a waste of three hours. Thanks to Net Galley for a preview copy in exchange for an honest review, and yes, I am always honest:)

Unique and fun. The narrator is definitely not a likable character but she speaks the thoughts so one wants to admit they think. Her snark got a little weary.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What utter garbage.

I had such high hopes for this book. Young up and coming female author? Check. Set in pre 9/11 New York? Sure! Awesome cover with hot pink text? Sign me up.

But instead of getting well written prose and an evocative setting with female characters in their twenties that I could relate to, or at the very least, enjoy reading about, I encountered flat, repulsive characters that weren't even fun to hate written in a self indulgent, nihilistic tone. I'm sure that the intent is to be edgy and artsy and intentionally unenjoyable.

But it isn't readable and doesn't work. Don't waste your time.

Ottessa Moshfegh is really making a name for herself as a master of character study. This is my favorite of her work yet. She creates these characters that seem so unreal on paper but then brings them to live with her words. By the time you're halfway through the book, you start understanding the character's motives in a way you never expected to.

In My Year of Rest and Relaxation, our narrator experiments with drug-induced hibernation. Normally, this would seem like an incredibly dramatic situation, but Moshfegh somehow makes it feel... light and natural. It's a desire that many of us feel when we are in times of intense stress. I felt a sense of satisfaction in the narrator's ability to plan out and implement her hibernation (regardless of the unhealthy means by which she attains it) because at its core, I think this novel is a good reminder that we all need to take a break and return to ourselves before we can carry on with life.

Let me start off by saying that I loved this book! The writing is amazing and somehow super compelling, even given it's subject matter and lack of traditional plot.

Our narrator embarks on a journey to basically become non-existent through an ill-advised plan she calls her "Year of Rest and Relaxation" where she uses combinations of heavy drugs to basically put herself to sleep for long periods of time.

I will say that this book is probably not for everybody. The main character is, by all rights, super unlikable and is generally a terrible person, and yet, somehow, Moshfegh pulls us completely into her world. This is a skillful character study of a woman going to extreme lengths to try and feel . . . different.

Overall, Ottessa Moshfegh is a truly excellent writer, and I'm still not sure how she pulled it off, but I'm glad she did! I would recommend this book to folks who enjoy Miranda July, or the like.

Ottessa Moshfegh has crossed over to the deep sleep state with this well-written explorative novel. Her novel about a young woman who tries to reset her brain through medically induced sleep is provocative and scary as hell. It's frightening in regards to the character's willingness to undergo active blackouts, uncontrolled behavior, sleep eating and more all in pursuit of escaping her own mental demons. Demons that would seem to most people to just be normal in our currently abnormal world. Moshfegh's supporting cast of characters are equally disturbed in their own ways, whether with the need to fit in or the need to "express" through so-called modern art. In summary, this is a frighteningly grim look, although fictional, at desperation.

The narrator is seemingly a NYC "it" girl, a size 2 blonde who works at an art gallery and has an inheritance. She decides she needs to sleep for a year and finds a wacky psychiatrist with a penchant for prescription pads. Pills of all kinds for anxiety, depression, insomnia etc. are given and gladly taken. Sleep occurs with bouts of shopping and partying unconsciously. There is a best friend who has her own numbing issues with alcohol and as desperate as some of the scenes may be, some are laugh out loud amusing. There is quite a bit of 9/11 foreshadowing that isn't very subtle and plenty of irony focused on the material and art world and the objectification of women. A bit rambling in spots but otherwise a witty read about a dark subject.

A twenty-something nameless, parentless, lifeless girl finds herself face to face with her existential void. Instead of trying to fill that void with all the inessential and futile stuff the world seem to offer—as done by her friend Reva and by her cynical and quite misogynist fiancé Trevor, both symbols of a quasi-Darwinian adaptation to their environment—decides to immerse herself in that nothingness and take a year of rest and relaxation from life, i.e. sleep for a whole year with the aid of the pills prescribed by the weird and indulgent Dr. Tuttle.
She ends up with a progressive cancellation of her external world, in a path not unlike that of Descartes and Berkeley.
Ottessa Moshfegh blends irony, black humor and sadness and creates a fresco of what it means to be human at the beginning of the millennium, where the fears of the nineties have become real, and where the only way we have to face them seems to be the pharmaceutical drugs that erase the world.

Otessa Moshfegh’s ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ is one of my favorite book of 2018 (so far). The book follows one woman's quest to hibernate in a deep sleep for a year under the influence of as much prescription medication as she could get her hands on. I'm not sure what I can say that hasn't already been said - this book describes the hard reality of detachment and the beauty in sleep.

Who hasn't wanted to drop out, hibernate in our apartment for a long time, get away from the world for a while? Ottessa Moshfegh's unnamed narrator takes the need for getting away from it all and puts a plan of action into effect. In late 1999, the narrator, a recent Columbia University graduate with a major in art history, lives on East 84th Street in a doorman building paid for by her inheritance. She works in a chic art gallery downtown for $22,000 a year. Her job description is to help out at openings but otherwise to sit in the gallery and ignore any pedestrian visitor. The hibernation begins when she begins taking her lunch in the form of a nap in a closet.

The narrator is deeply troubled by the loss of her father and shortly after, her mother. Trevor dumped her, a creep who seemingly used her as an armpiece and sex partner. His sexual proclivities place him in the misogynistic category. The only friend who comes to visit is Reva, a college roommate. Reva is irritating with her constant comparison to the narrator who is tall, blonde and wears a size 2. Reva wants to look like her roommate and have men attracted her as well. She wears a size 4 but is always on a new diet program. She does not like herself. Reva is having an affair with her boss, Ken.

So the first step to getting as many hours of sleep as possible is to get drugs. A psychiatrist picked out of the phone book proves to be a perfect set up. Dr. Tuttle is as quacky as they come, even giving out samples and telling her patient not to divulge where she got them. Every fake symptom the patient comes up with, gives Dr. Tuttle a new inspiration to prescribe more Ambien, Xanax, Ativan, Haldol, Librium, etc. The narrator is drugged up every night and begins to start missing days at work.

When sleep begins to evade her, the narrator cooks up a plan to sleep for most of every day for six months. She finds an artist from her art gallery who she knows will do anything for an off the wall exhibition. The rest of the story is a bit scary. I couldn't stop reading OM's writing which ticked off every cultural phenomenon from the late nineties in New York City. The insights into a loss, loneliness, and pain ring with a staggering truth. I wanted to reach out and take hold of that young woman who had the potential for a good, meaningful life. This novel was a life lesson fit for women of any age.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for the opportunity to read this ARC.

'This was the beauty of sleep- reality detached itself and appeared in my mind as casually as a movie or a dream. It was easy to ignore things that didn’t concern me.'

Moshfegh is a hell of a writer, I was dazed after reading this novel. I felt like I was sucked into the pit of our narrator’s despair. Finishing this was like stepping out of a pitch dark room into torturous sunlight. Our narrator is seemingly blessed with beauty, a fabulous education, and money which allows her this living death of sorts. Her best friend Reva, oh lord what a complicated relationship these two share. “I was both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you’d feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide.” Well that grabs your attention! This is more than just a personal slum she is suffering through and Reva tries to snap her out of it. She loves her friend and doesn’t really like her at the same time. It’s evident why as we get to know them both. There is a jealousy that shivers off Reva, and has never been hidden. Is she satisfied to see her best friend, this ‘effortless beauty’ sink into hibernation? Maybe.

It can come off as self-indulgent, as people who don’t understand depression find such people can. I kept thinking of scenes from Moonstruck when Cher smacks Nicholas Cage and tells him “snap out of it”, a movie twenty somethings likely have no idea what I am talking about. When she starts seeing Dr. Tuttle, of questionable character, she gets her fill of pills that further fog her mind. This young woman has passed the point of numb, she is much like a barnacle in her bed, clinging to her soured sheets. What caused her to go from behaving much in the same way the other ‘self-important’ go-getters do to this state of arrest.

Truth be told, most people can’t break down like this without far greater disruptions in their life, nor in the lives of others. The rest of us are more likely to go into auto-pilot or the land of grin and bear it until we snap and search for something to fix us, but still have to pry ourselves out the door to earn money. You will absolutely feel clubbed over the head and foggy yourself, not a lot of writers can make you feel their characters depression like this. I was going to write a review ‘in a day’ but left it for weeks! I shouldn’t have laughed at Dr. Tuttle, but what an oddity! It’s far too easy for our dear narrator to get pills she shouldn’t be touching.

Her relationship with Trevor was mostly one where she was available and easily manipulated. Her mother, in a sense, introduced her to hibernation years before. Her hardworking father kicked out of bed with his wife, carrying a cancer inside of him, distant always from his child. “He was kind of non-entity..”, is this early damage what caused a woman with ‘model looks’ to wish to be more a bum then the privileged darling birth made her? Sleep is better than remembering every detail of her life. Her mother went from moments of small affections to “I can’t listen to you now”, and disappearing into phone calls, or baths or Daniel Steal novels. This is a mother who crushed, if she is to be believed, valium into her baby bottle to treat the annoyance of her colic. A mother that doesn’t want a child who is awake and needy. Someone ‘accountable for nothing”, drunk on alcohol and selfishness. She learned to find solace in the attention girls of lesser beauty gave her, being invisible to her mother and father. Reva is just another admirer she collected, in a way. But can Reva stand to watch her sink, when she herself has very real issues in her own life and needs a friend?

When she isn’t making up symptoms to get stronger drugs, she shares the rotted memories that spring a leak in her mind. Angry that she ‘degraded herself’ with Trevor, the abrupt death of her father who was never really real to her, but able to sleep it out of her system with pills she finds herself doing strange things on the internet in her drugged state, having black outs, she longs for a strong sedative. Do we feel sorry for her, though irritated with her for her endlessly exhausting self-pity? I still don’t know. People live through worse. That’s the thing, it’s hard to relate to when you aren’t going through it.

Before long she is waking up wondering, what day is it? Where am I? When Reva suffers a loss, she shows up for her friend but needs more support than she gives to the person who is actually in mourning. Maybe she doesn’t have the strength to rally any emotion, having grown up in a joyless home, unable to get close to her parents, maybe she can’t grasp the overwhelming grief of losing loved one . Or maybe this dissociation with reality, this numbed up sleep is grief itself, long overdue. Can you grieve people who you believe never loved you, those you never truly knew? Can you grieve the person you have become or were or the years left to become?

Will she ever return to the world? It ends as it should, and this is by far one of the strangest books I’ve read. I had to step out into the light to get the stink of despair off my skin! You don’t have to be in your twenties to understand how someone can sink, who seems like she has so much more than the rest of the world. Anyone can get stuck in the tar of despair, she was numb before the pills. Is there any one thing that stands out? No, it’s everything that ever happened or ever will, maybe it’s even the assumption most people would feel looking at this beautiful woman imaging her living a charmed, care-free existence. She is disturbed and stunted, and sleep is her means of escape until it isn’t.

Publication Date: July 10, 2018
Penguin Press

My Year of Rest and Relaxation was surprisingly eventful for not much happening. Darkly humourous, but can on occasion lose momentum between drug-fueled somnambulant episodes. If you liked Ultra Luminous by Katherine Faw or the works of Bret Easton Ellis Rest and Relaxation will be a found-pill for you. .

I've never read another novel quite like this - plus one of the great psychiatrist depictions in literature.

This book was hypnotic. I couldn't put it down. Not a lot of action or suspense -- a bit of dread, perhaps, worried about what would happen to the protagonist, especially since the date the story takes places obviously was leading up to a major event in modern history. Definitely recommend!

One thing is clear: Otessa Mosfegh knows how to write. I have already been intrigued, mesmerized and repulsed, in equal measure by Eileen, which I thought was superbly written so I was ready for this next novel. This satirical, lyrical, literary work written in the form of a memoir dazzles and exhilarates at the same time. The plot is simple: We follow the protagonist who decides to take off a year from her life and sleep through her depression. This idea is so fantastically simple and so familiar. Who has not wanted to sleep through the worst moments of their life? Having experimented with quantities of drugs freely prescribed to her by a quirky psychiatrist the unnamed narrator realizes that in order for her plan to work she needs to be under lock and key to prevent her from going out during her blackouts. She finds an artist she knows from her work in an art gallery to agree to supervise her “hibernation” in exchange for letting him use her as an object of his art in her sleeping state. He brings her food every three days, she wakes up and goes to sleep every three days.
There are few events in this novel most of them in the first part while the second part is a wrap up, but it contains a lot of emotional material related to the past and present life of the narrator. There is a lot of superbly described mundane reality. There is satire. There is art scene of New York. The visits to the psychiatrist are little gems. Mosfegh delivers an impecable and luxuriously packaged literary novel of the twenty first century western malaise in the privileged urban life. Reading this book was an absolute pleasure and a wonderful treat. Having said that I know that anybody looking for a plot driven novel or a traditional approach to fiction will not like it. The readers who liked The line is made by walking by Sara Blume or The Department of Speculation by Jenny Ofill might enjoy it.

I am already a fan of Ottessa Moshfegh. This did not disappoint. I find her characters oddly relatable, and they capture my imagination in a way that no other writer does. I have found myself being both disgusted and intrigued by Moshfegh's writing, even when it hits close to home.