Author: Ottessa Moshfegh File Type: epub From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young womans 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, shouldnt she? Shes 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 isnt just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. Its 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. **Amazon.com Review An Amazon Best Book of July 2018 Not a whole lot happens in Ottessa Moshfeghs novel. If that sounds like a deal breaker, consider yourself warned. My Year of Rest and Relaxation takes place in 2001, when a pretty young Columbia graduate with an easy job at an art gallery decides to take a year off just to sleep. She has access to a quack psychiatrist willing to prescribe her an arsenal of pills, and she has money that she inherited from her deceased parents. She also has a terrible older boyfriend who works on Wall Street and a best friend, Reva, with whom she shares a thorny, complicated relationship. Thats pretty much all the raw story material Moshfegh is working withagain, the goal being for the unnamed protagonist to hibernateand the fact that Moshfegh keeps the pages turning, and turning rapidly, is a testament to her profound skill as an author. This is a mostly internal novel. It is insightful to the smallest detail, and it is darkly, insightfully funny. It shimmers with intelligence and empathy. No one in the book is particularly happy, but I am particularly happy I read it. * Chris Schluep , Amazon Book Review * Review Darkly comic and ultimately profound new novel. . . Moshfeghs extraordinary prose soars as it captures her characters re-engagement. New York Times Book Review Because this is a novel by the superabundantlytalented Moshfegh shes an American writer of Croatian and Iranian descent with a name like that of an avant-garde London restaurant we know in advance that it will be cool, strange, aloof and disciplined. The sentences will be snipped as if the writer has an extra row of teeth . . . Moshfegh is an inspired literary witch doctor. She invents many of the drugs her heroine ingests, the way Don DeLillo invented Dylar, to placate the fear of death, in White Noise. These have serio-comic names like Valdignore and Prognosticrone and Maxiphenphen and Silencior. There was a joke at Rolling Stone magazine that if the drugs ran out at a party, one could find Hunter S. Thompson and suck on him. Depressives without prescriptions could lick Moshfeghs heroines elbow . . . If shes on downers, the prose in My Year of Rest and Relaxation is mostly on uppers. Like its narrator, this is a remorseless little machine. Moshfeghs sentences are piercing and vixenish, each one a kind of orphan. She plays interestingly with substance and illusion, with dread and solace on the installment plan. This book builds subtly toward the events of Sept. 11 . . . Moshfegh writes with so much misanthropic aplomb, however, that she is always a deep pleasure to read. She has a sleepless eye and dispenses observations as if from a toxic eyedropper . . . Though this novel is set nearly 20 years ago, it feels current. The thought of sleeping through this particular moment in the worlds history has appeal. Dwight Garner, *The New York Times* Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfeghs] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.* Vogue * Youll emerge from this darkly hilarious novel not necessarily rested or relaxed but more finely attuned to how delicately fraught the human condition can be. Marie Claire Moshfegh has a keen sense of everyday absurdities, a deadpan delivery, and such a well-honed sense of irony that the narrators predicament never feels tragic this may be the finest existential novel not written by a French author. . . . A nervy modern-day rebellion tale that isnt afraid to get dark or find humor in the darkness. Kirkus, starred review Electrifying. . . Moshfeghs narrators final gesture, transforming herself into a piece of half-living art, echoes the odd and combative passivity of Herman Melvilles Bartleby, a scrivener who suddenly, inexplicably, refuses to perform his duties. . . . In a country that celebrates doers, such a preference is grotesque, an inversion of the American ideal of prospering through hard work. But it also serves as a reminder that there is something to life outside the economic exchange of time for money and money for goods, even if that unnamed thing is obscure and perplexing and just a bit monstrous--particularly as a woman. Literature may not have the all the answers, but it can show us the power and allure of saying no. Vanity Fair I was cringing during every moment of Ottessa MoshfeghsMy Year of Rest and Relaxation, and yet I could not put the book down . . . Moshfeghs protagonist is brutally dreary, and the brutality of her dreariness is often very funny, but the book is really quite serious . . . The book seems to anchor itself to real experiences of pain and to validate itself by their relevance . . . But it is mostly, almost by juxtaposition, about the realness of a more subtle and very privateexpressionof pain, no matter the cause, no matter how seemingly trivial. Thats what kept me reading even as my cringing muscles grew sore feeling in my screwed-up face, barked laughs, and watery eyes the translation of that private kind of pain into something I could share. Claire Benoit, Paris Review Moshfeghs ear remains as merciless as ever. Like a latter-day Flaubert, she delights in vanity and mediocrity, and in the absurdist heights both can reach whenever the occasion calls for a few sincere words. Harpers Magazine When we are recommended a book we usually ask, What is it about? But with Ottessa MoshfeghsMy Year of Rest and Relaxation(out July 10 from Penguin), we ask, What isnt it about? This novel takes on self-hatred, feminism, sexuality, mental health, family, and big pharma AND its really fcking funny. I dont even want to tell you too much because I went in blind, loving Ottessa from her novelEileen*(also worth a read) and found myself hooting and hollering, vibing on a very different tip than her other work put me on. Im so impressed that just one lady has written all these very special different things. Also, this book cover will have you kissing millennial pink goodbye and walking over to hot pinks corner. About time! Lena Dunham