‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ sounds like a chill, laid-back book that you could probably read on a holiday. But Ottessa Moshfegh’s second novel which was published in 2018 narrates the story of a young girl who starts relying on prescription drugs in order to sleep for an entire year. Loss and grief feature heavily in the story which tackles serious subjects like relationship issues and mental health. The narrator is a young unnamed woman in New York. She is just out of high school and is working as a receptionist at an art gallery. She has a lot of problems, and childhood trauma to deal with. Her father ignored her, and her mother was a drunk who used Valium to pacify her when she was a baby. She thinks of their deaths as just another way in which they rejected her. Worse, she doesn’t like her best friend, Reva and she has always felt used by her boyfriend, Trevor. Now he’s her ex, but she can’t stop obsessing over him. Thankfully, her inheritance allows her to do as she pleases without having to worry about money. So, she decides to take a year off and recover—by taking as many drugs as possible and sleeping for days on end.

She believes a chemically induced chrysalis is the only way she can fix herself. Her partner-in-crime in all this is Dr Tuttle whose go-to medical advice is ‘dial 911 if something bad happens’. Moshfegh has been criticized for writing characters who are repulsive or repulsed by themselves. But by doing so, she hits home the fact that people are never perfect. We all have a dark side to ourselves that, as much as we might try, we don’t always succeed in hiding.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is darkly humorous and makes you feel seen and heard, despite not always being able to relate to the narrator. Fair warning though, it could be a little triggering for those dealing with anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues. About the author Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Her first book, McGlue, a novella, won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award. Her first novel, Eileen, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. She is also the author of the short story collection ‘Homesick for Another World’. Four stars Fiction My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ottessa Moshfegh Published: 2018 Publisher: Penguin Press Pages: 304, Paperback