Hi guys, it's Aisling, back chatting to you again on the Waterstones vlog. This month
round I've got another fiction reading recommendation for you and this time
I've chosen My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh.
Ottessa Moshfegh is the author of the 2016 Man Booker shortlisted novel, Eileen. She's
also written a short story collection called Homesick for Another World and a
novella called Mcglue. But this is her latest novel. So My Year of Rest and
Relaxation follows the story of an unnamed young woman living in New York City
She's kind of living off the inheritance of two quite wealthy parents
who have just died so she's got a lot of money and she doesn't really have to do
much. You know she's described several times
throughout the book as being particularly beautiful, very thin, always
dressed in very you know smart, elegant, fashionable clothes. She has this cool
job where she works in an art gallery part-time but she doesn't really have to
do anything there either but still makes money from it. She's got a lot of
connections and knows a lot of people. She is engaged in a relationship with an
older man called Trevor who kind of works in finance and she's got a best
friend called Reva who is very concerned about her and always trying to kind of
encourage her to live life to the full. Now despite all this the main character
still doesn't seem to be able to kind of bring any happiness or you know genuine
excitement or light out of her life. She feels kind of displaced, she feels like
she's not really doing anything or going anywhere or nothing satisfies her
nothing really feels good. So she sort of decides to embark on this sort of
experiment where she's going to try to sleep for a year. And this is the concept
of the book and I really really like this because you know when you come home
some days and you're just like oh I want to sleep for a year? Well this is
actually what the character tries to do but I don't recommend that people try it!
So she finds herself a psychotherapist/psychiatrist who will
willingly prescribe her large amounts of pills and medication so that
she could knock herself out for you know several hours at a time. And she does
find this in a doctor called Dr. Tuttle who, like, all her kind of interactions
are very ,very funny. Like there's a lot of actually really good black humor in
this especially with Dr. Tuttle and the friend Riva as well. Because the main
character and Reva are so different to each other. Reva just wants to you know
look pretty and get married and have kids and have that kind of you know
cookie-cutter life and the main character is just kind of repulsed by
even the idea of this. So it just kind of drives this wedge between them but it
just means that their conversations are very, very funny.
So Dr. Tuttle prescribes the main character all these kind of meds and
pills and then she proceeds to sort of go on this journey where over time she
is eventually able to have herself sleeping or at least unconscious for
longer and longer periods of time. And then she wakes up and discovers that
she's been doing strange things in her sleep. So she begins buying
loads of things on Amazon and just doing and saying weird things that she doesn't
remember, because obviously she's been asleep. And yeah the whole plot kind of
unfurls from there. I would really, really recommend this book I think if you're
into kind of dark, really dry, sort of biting, pitiless comedy, you'll like it.
And there are some incredibly sad moments as well, especially when the
character is coming to terms with the death of the two parents and the grief
that kind of finally spills out of there, it's great. I thought there was so much
to this book, like if you were doing it for a book club or something you could
discuss it for hours because even though the character, she's unnamed you
know, and really she should be boring because she's just one of these sort of
lucky, rich, beautiful people that really there's nothing to her; it's so
deep you know the actual act of trying to sleep for a year and where your mind
has to be at to want to do that to yourself and kind of remove yourself
from the world for that amount of time. So yes, I really, really recommend it.
It kind of haunted me for a while, I actually read this quite a while ago and
I've been thinking about it ever since because I haven't read anything quite
like it because even though it was sort of outlandish and a bit mad and scary,
it still really spoke to me because it's something that's possible you know
something that could happen and for that reason it just sort of stayed with
me. So yes I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys kind of a dark biting
laugh, anyone who may be interested in like darker sort of literary fiction but
it's not too dark, I feel like it's accessible enough; and perhaps anybody
who read Eileen when that was out I think two or three years ago, I think
you'll be a fan of this also. Okay guys so that's my book recommendation for
this month around I will see you next time and until then, keep reading. Bye!