By: Isabelle Landry
A 24-year old un-named narrator begins to sleep all day becoming addicted to dozens of meds ( some with invented names). She stumbles upon a psychiatrist, Dr. Tuttle by strolling through the phone book, who is happy to prescribe all the pills she wants as if it were candy. This leads her to embark on a six month marathon sleep.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh is a tale of existential pain set in 2000 and 2001. It ends during 9/11, but the writing feels very millennial and modern. The misanthropic narrator, who is rich, looks like a model even if she is a total slub goes on an chemically induced hibernation project for the purpose of disappearing only to reappear in some new form.
With the help of Dr. Tuttle, she finds a drug “interfermiterol” which makes her sleep 3 days at a time. A self-righteous downtown artist who exhibited at the Chelsea gallery - the same place where the narrator once worked and incidentally was fired for sleeping on the job, is in charge of taking care of her while she sleeps. She gets inspired to film the sleeping beauty for a “subversive art project”. A powerful sub-plot, where the narrator becomes an “art-project”.
If you like Joan Didion, Requiem for a dream and Girls you will fall for My Year of Rest and Relaxation and its antisocial, sloppy and self-destructive narrator.