My Year of Rest Relaxation is the book every once in a while someone mentions as their favorite. It got little hype when it first came out, but with time it’s popularity grew and it is pretty popular now, and I feel it is mostly because of word of mouth.
First time I noticed it was when my friend who works in a book store talked about it with one of his customers. I took my time to finally pick it up, and now when I read this amazing piece of literature, I can say that I get it.
This book deserves all the hype and phrasing as it was simple but amazing.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation was first time published on July 10th 2018 and it has 289 pages.
About the book:
FROM GOODREADS /
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.
Review:
I don’t know what it is, but this book hypnotized me. I couldn’t stop reading it and at times it was like I was the character. That’s how invested I was.
It was so easy to relate to MC, at times it was even scary (like that time when I caught myself daydreaming how it would be nice to have my own year of rest and relaxation).
Reading what this book was about I would never assume that this book would be the one I’d have a hard time putting down.
However, thanks to word of mouth I picked it up and now I know I need more of this in my life.
I always loved literary fiction, but this whole experience taught me I need to read more of this genre.
It’s like every time I read a literary fiction novel I feel richer.
This book is no exception.
The book is set in early 00s and I love that time period, when technology wasn’t so developed but it was developed enough.
The last chapter was the most impactful but if I am being honest, it was my least favorite.
Book Dust Magic 