My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Description

The iconic New York Times bestseller and definitive BookTok literary phenomenon! From Ottessa Moshfegh, one of the most celebrated and daring voices in contemporary fiction, comes My Year of Rest and Relaxation—a brilliantly dark, razor-sharp, and blackly funny novel about alienation in the modern world. Perfect for fans of Mona Awad, Sally Rooney, and sharp psychological satire, this unputdownable book offers an unforgettable exploration of grief, consumerism, and the desperate desire to escape reality.

Our unnamed narrator should be perfectly happy, shouldn’t she? She is young, thin, exceptionally pretty, a recent Columbia University graduate, and works an effortless job at a hip Manhattan art gallery. She lives in a beautiful apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her daily needs, by a hefty inheritance. Yet, there is a dark, vacuous, and aching hole in her heart. It isn’t just the lingering trauma of losing both her parents, or the toxic way her transactional Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her exhausting, sadomasochistic relationship with her codependent best friend, Reva. It is the year 2000 in a New York City aglitter with wealth, status, and superficial possibility—so what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation provides a powerful, shocking answer to that question. It chronicles a young woman’s calculated effort to completely duck the ills, anxieties, and noises of the world by embarking on an extended, year-long pharmaceutical hibernation. Assisted by one of the absolute worst, most wildly incompetent psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the massive battery of intense prescription medicines she unthinkingly prescribes, our heroine attempts to sleep away an entire year in hopes of clicking reset on her soul.

Through this compelling story of a year spent under the heavy influence of a truly mad combination of downers and antipsychotics, Moshfegh masterfully demonstrates how reasonable, and even completely necessary, alienation can be in a hyper-capitalist society. Both tender and mercilessly cynical, compassionate and deeply provocative, this contemporary masterpiece showcases a major writer working at the absolute height of her narrative powers.

Expertly channeling the literary fiction, dark comedy, psychological drama, and existential satire genres, My Year of Rest and Relaxation delivers a beautifully structured, atmospheric, and deeply thought-provoking reading experience that continues to define modern internet and book culture.