My year of rest and relaxation

356 sidor

På English

Publicerades 10 juli 2018

ISBN:: 978-0-525-63193-4
OCLC-nummer:: 1044537985

Early 2000 on New York City's Upper East Side. The alienation of an unnamed young protagonist from others is nearly complete when she initiates her yearlong siesta, during which time she experiences limited personal interactions. Her parents have died; her relationships with her bulimic best friend Reva, an ex-boyfriend, and her drug-pushing psychiatrist are unwholesome. As her pill-popping intensifies, so does her isolation and determination to leave behind the world's travails. She is also beset by dangerous blackouts induced by a powerful medication. -- adapted from back cover

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's 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 isn't just …

Early 2000 on New York City's Upper East Side. The alienation of an unnamed young protagonist from others is nearly complete when she initiates her yearlong siesta, during which time she experiences limited personal interactions. Her parents have died; her relationships with her bulimic best friend Reva, an ex-boyfriend, and her drug-pushing psychiatrist are unwholesome. As her pill-popping intensifies, so does her isolation and determination to leave behind the world's travails. She is also beset by dangerous blackouts induced by a powerful medication. -- adapted from back cover

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's 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 isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's 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.

9 utgåvor

Björn recenserade My Year of Rest and Relaxation av Ottessa Moshfegh

None

5 stjärnor

I keep thinking of comparisons as I'm pulled, grinning, through this novel in two long breathless sessions. Kafka, Camus, Ellis, Wurtzel, whatever... then on the last few pages it strikes me that this is essentially the millennial, post-postmodern, post-ironic version of Perec's A Man Who Sleeps.

And all of it is just my projecting things on the novel that it doesn't need, because Moshfegh's writing feels so self-assured, so sneeringly matter-of-fact but with a good ol' dose of US sentiment lurking in the corners that any comparisons to other writers feels like I'm trying to lend the novel a glory it doesn't need to borrow.

Ämnen

Fiction
Young women
Solitude
Medication abuse
Quacks and quackery

Platser

New York (State)
New York (N.Y.)
New York