If You Knew What Would Make You Happy, Wouldn’t You Do It?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh tells the story of a 24-year-old woman who wants to take a year of hibernation from the world and wake up with a new outlook on life.

To do that, she takes a cocktail of psychopharmaceuticals. Combining real and fictitious medication prescribed by her eccentric psychiatrist, the narrator ends up sleeping multiple days in a row, sometimes having only 2 hours in between each sleep.

The book focuses on when she is awake. Her taking multiple pills, binge-watching Whoopi Goldberg's movies on VCR, and contemplating life.

This is a novel of immense and yet very ordinary human sadness.

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.

It is both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate.

Life is hard

No matter who you are, you’ve complained about how hard life is at some point. And you’ve probably wished to sleep for a whole day, week, month, or even year.

I definitely have.

So when I found this book about a woman my age, that does exactly that, I was intrigued.

All she wants is to go to sleep for a year and wake up with a new outlook on life.

She knows that going to sleep will not change her life or the world around her. But sometimes a good night’s sleep can help you get out of a rut.

Have you ever had a bad day and woke up the next morning feeling much better? Feeling motivated, inspired, optimistic, or hopeful?

That’s basically what this character is going for.

But instead of getting that in a night, she feels like she’s in so much pain that she needs to sleep for an entire year to wake up feeling better.

This book got me hooked on the very first page. Such a simple concept, yet so captivated.

Nothing really happens in this book. The plot is not that intricate or exciting, yet I couldn’t put it down. I loved it that much.

There’s a lot of repetition throughout the book, but that didn’t make me less interested.

She takes a lot of pills, watches the same 80’s movies repeatedly, feels confused about what might have happened during a blackout, and feels frustrated at the lack of efficiency of the current chemical cocktail.

Page after page, she feels further away from getting better.

It got to a point that I didn’t even know if she was going to be alright and maybe that was the reason I felt an urge to keep reading.

The fact that this book is set in New York City in 2000 and 2001 also kept me on the edge of my seat because I knew 9/11 was about to happen and it would affect the characters.

What I Liked About This Book

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a book unlike any other I have read before.

It questions whether we can ever really escape pain.

It points out how other people around us are also dealing with their own demons. Even if they seem super happy and excited about life.

But it also shows how no matter what life throws at us, and how little control we might have, we can always control the way we deal with it. The way we confront life.

Confronting life with whatever it brings is the way to live in this world. That’s where freedom is: being awake.

The writing

Moshfegh writing keeps you engaged because of how vivid it is.

As you’re reading this book, you can feel how pointless everything feels to the narrator.

The characters

There are 4 main characters in this book: the narrator, her psychiatrist Dr. Tuttle, her best friend Reva, and her on-and-off boyfriend Trevor.

The main character is not a good person. And I liked that.

She is a complex human being going through a lot and knows that she is rude and a horrible friend, but she keeps being herself because she’s at a point in her life where she feels like nothing matters.

I loved how realistic it all felt.

Although the main character had a lot of privilege — she’s white, thin, blonde, and living on the Upper East Side — , she felt real.

The way Moshfegh wrote this character, felt as if she was writing her based on someone she was close to. Or even herself.

The relationships the narrator has with the people around her were interesting to read. They are not as simple as they might seem. Especially her relationship with her best friend Reva.

The narrator describes her relationship with her best friend as “I loved her but I didn’t like her anymore”.

Reva is a character that the narrator loves to hate and feels superior to.

Her hatred of Reva says more about her than it says about Reva.

“I had to admit that it was a comfort to have Reva there. She was just as good as a VCR, I thought. The cadence of her speech was as familiar and predictable as the audio from any movie I’d watched a hundred times. That’s why I’d held on to her this long, I thought as I lay there, not listening. Since I’d known her, the drone of whatifs, the seemingly endless descriptions of her delusional romantic projections had become a kind of lullaby.”

The dysfunctional, abusive, and toxic relationships that she has with the people around her are reflections of what she dealt with in the past, her relationship with her parents, and herself.

Mental health awareness

This book brings mental health awareness through 2 characters: the narrator and her best friend Reva.

Through the narrator, we see the perspective of someone who is consciously suffering.

Through Reva, we see the perspective of someone that is forcing herself to stay positive and keep going but is suffering inside.

The way Moshfegh depicts mental health shows how complex it is.

Even though the narrator seemed to have no reason to be depressed, she was.

And even though Reva seemed happy with her life, she wasn’t.

By writing about topics such as depression, eating disorders, addiction, trauma, and abuse, Mosfegh brings awareness and starts a conversation around important topics that are still very much stigmatized.

The pace

The book has a wonderful pace.

As the narrator gets more isolated, things get more out of control.

She ends up taking a drug that makes her blackout for days.

She wakes up with a new haircut, nails done, appointment confirmation emails and texts, takeaway, clothes and so many other stuff she doesn’t remember buying.

It got to a point that I was reading it as a mystery novel. I was on the edge of my seat wondering what she’d wake up to next.

The ending

The ending was just perfect.

I was not expecting to feel hopeful by the end of such a dark story. But I’m glad I did.

There’s not much I can tell about the ending without spoiling, but I liked how Moshfegh was able to give us a little hope after such a dark story.

The movie references

I couldn’t write a list of things I liked about this book without mentioning the movie references.

Moshfegh made me realize I haven’t seen that many of Whoopi Goldberg’s movies.

From Ghost to The Color Purple, I found myself writing down a list of movies I wanted to watch.

Final Thoughts

Overall Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a dark humours story about depression, trauma, life, and sleep.

She just wanted to sleep for a year and wake up feeling better. Who can’t relate to that?

I empathized with both the narrator and her best friend Reva.

The things they go through are things that a lot of people go through. More people than we know about. It’s the sadness of suffering in silence.

But this book ends on a good note, leaving you feeling hopeful and happy for the narrator.

“The notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn’t exist yet.” ― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

If you’re interested in reading this book, get it here.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve read this book and what you think of it. Did you enjoy it?

Follow my reading progress on Goodreads!

In need of book recommendations? Subscribe to my newsletter and get an email every week with book recommendations, book quotes, and so much more.

*This article contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase any of the books through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.*