Sweet Dreams: Review of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh // Rebecca Mangra

One day, you wake up in the middle of the afternoon. You are alone in your Upper East Side apartment. The toaster has an unusual metal sheen. Three days have passed.

This is how Ottessa Moshfegh’s unnamed narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation wakes up after a drug-induced sleep. In an attempt to regenerate a new life for herself, maybe even become a new person, she decides to spend a year sleeping. Through the help of a questionable psychiatrist—who at one point comments that “we’re [all] mostly nothing”—she secures the drugs she needs to accomplish her goal. All her bills are on auto-pay; she was recently fired from a job at a New York art gallery and is collecting unemployment cheques; and visits to her apartment mainly come from her “best friend” from college, Reva, who she hates. Born to wealthy, unemotional parents who died a few years earlier and left a substantial inheritance, the narrator is described as “tall and thin and blonde and pretty and young.” She emerges for brief breaks from slumber to drink burnt coffee from the local bodega and maybe get an ice cream sandwich. 

One might wonder why someone in her situation needs a break from life. At first glance, it may seem like Sleeping Beauty has been reincarnated—but Moshfegh has cleverly contrasted her narrator’s generic makeup with much larger forces. The novel begins at an undetermined time after she has completed her year of sleep (which has gone from June 2000 to June 2001) and continues until September 2001. 9/11 hangs over the novel like a rain cloud that doesn’t need to burst for its weight to be felt. It’s a significant time period, especially in context of the novel’s plot. Unlike the narrator, who is forcibly trying to change her life and its meaning, many had no choice but to reevaluate their existence on September 11, when so many lives were lost and the world reminded everyone of its fragility. Whether or not the narrator is changed by her rest, we as an audience already know that the world will change dramatically anyway soon after she wakes up. While the tragedy is not mentioned directly in the narrative until the very end, Moshfegh’s choice to set the novel in the pre-9/11 era is not a random one. The protagonist is attempting a metamorphosis, and would like to slowly allow her cells to regenerate over a year and turn her into someone new, which is  contrasted with a horrendous terrorist attack that in a few hours, completely destroyed countless families and sent reverberations throughout the world. The subtle setting choice adds an eerie dimension to the novel, one that serves as a reminder of the fine line between the choices we make and the fates that follow us. 

Despite how interesting the book sounds, it does not deviate much from its main plot, which makes it hard to read as you get into the latter half. There is only so much that can happen to a character who spends most of her time sleeping. The novel ebbs and flows as the narrator seeks to become something more than just beautiful and lucky; she is trying to see if life is worth more than consumerist fantasies parading around as art, martinis, rejection, sex and death. While the novel is not a straightforward existential quest that ends with a rebirth, the mood created in the novel is an empty and depressing one, largely due to the narrator’s repetitive routine that only takes slight detours. Flashbacks are used to break up the narrative, which only serve to highlight the narrator’s lonely upbringing with an alcoholic mother and an apathetic academic for a father. Moshfegh has created a novel that is at times slow and repetitive, which is exactly what the narrator is trying to get away from in her waking life. In a way, even readers are not spared the existential dread that plagues the protagonist. 

Ultimately, the novel showcases a woman who wants to be better. She is selfish and lacks any empathetic bones in her body, and at times is also completely desperate for approval from the most unusual sources. Her underlying need for acceptance is most exhibited through her constant calls to her sometimes-lover Trevor, an egotistical banker who works at the World Trade Center. Underneath her exterior lies a jaded woman trying to find something real in a world that is more interested in either simulating the real (through alcohol, parties, and drugs) or judging people attempting to find authenticity from the safe perch of a Manhattan barstool. While her method to enlightenment is questionable, and despite how unlikable a character she is, Moshfegh manages to present a protagonist who is singularly focused on unraveling the parts of herself that she hates, to see if there is someone genuine inside. She believes that her body will naturally fix all of her flaws and give her a new slate to work with: “Life was fragile and fleeting and one had to be cautious, sure, but I would risk death if it meant I could sleep all day and become a whole new person.” 

The book also explores the damaging ways in which women’s bodies are used, objectified, judged and praised. The protagonist, like many women, has spent many of her formative years waxing, prodding, plucking, and shaving to achieve a Western ideal of beauty. While the narrator is naturally thin and describes herself as “hot shit,” Reva, on the other hand, is bulimic and constantly jealous. When they are both at a spa and the narrator completely disrobes, in contrast to the women in bikinis and cover-ups, she tells a horrified Reva, “There aren’t any men around. Nobody’s ogling you.” To which Reva replies, “It’s not about the men. Women are so judgmental.” The narrator complains to Reva that it’s not a contest and Reva retorts, “Yes, it is. You just can’t see it because you’ve always been the winner.” 

Femininity is a constant, never-ending performance, even for women like the narrator. Sleeping becomes an antidote of sorts; as a sleeper, you are nothing. You are passive. But in the novel, being passive becomes a powerful act, as the narrator refuses to perform—even if she’s theoretically “winning.” However, the quest for physical beauty is so psychologically deep-seated that the narrator sometimes wakes up out of drug-induced slumbers with her vagina waxed and her hair trimmed (these particular bouts of sleep are caused by the imaginary drug Infermiterol, which causes her to sleepwalk for days with no recollection of what happened since she fell asleep). By using an unnamed narrator and the physical traits of the type of woman we see across Western media frequently, Moshfegh demonstrates how ingrained societal expectations are in women’s psyche and how that affects the way they experience the world.

Moshfegh’s writing is simple, but complex in interpretation, as good writing usually is. Her observations about the world in which the characters live in are dark, funny and spot-on. Despite the novel’s setting almost twenty years ago, millennials will appreciate the narrator’s quest to find meaning, especially as our world is currently going through an extraordinary pandemic. Who are we at the core? What role will we play as history unfolds? Do we need to sleep for a year or go through an epidemic to be our best selves?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is darkly comic and at times insufferable, but not without meaning. It touches on life’s tedium and beauty and our human drive to change. 

Rebecca Mangra is a writer and editor based in Toronto, Canada. She has an Honours Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from York University. She is the recipient of the 2017 President’s Prize for Short Fiction and the 2018 Babs Burggraf Award for Creative Writing. She has a passion for books, clothes, intersectional feminism and chocolate-covered almonds.