Mi año de descanso y relajación

This novel is not for everyone. Anyone who has suffered depression, however, could likely relate to the melancholic, passive tone and lost days described by our narrator. Author Otessa Moshfegh gives us the bleakest answer to a mental health crisis, which somehow, I found comforting? In her self imposed isolation, this narrator draws some similarities with Nausea by Sarte, without 99% of the anxiety. In it's place, medication and apathy carve deep lines through the pages. It asks the question, what makes the living of this life any better than other lives one might choose? Dark, bleak, unique, and generally unsettling. I loved this book, I think of it often. I plan to read Lapvona soon.

Listen. I like it. It's weird, it's melancholy, it's a slow-paced drama about an unlikable, fairly privileged character coping with a mental-health crisis in the weirdest way possible so of course I finished it. But do I love it? No. No I do not.

It's a story that lacked any teeth: the character is (predictably considering the premise) extremely passive and that lends itself to the vague, moody, emptiness of the plot that concludes in a rather unsatisfying anti-climax.

It's a book about nothing but sort of a fun mesmerizing read anyway. It feels like discount millenial Willa Cather.

The book is also full of wierd anachronisms. all the characters have cellphones in the 2000, there are drugs mentioned which wouldn't be released for several years. It really feels like she shohorned in the 9/11 thing at the last minute

That said I did enjoy the read.

I love Ottessa Moshfegh's writing, but this just didn't come together

4/5

This book grew on me towards the end. The idea of a privileged, selfish woman trying to achieve rebirth by 'hibernating' is not one I've come across (if anyone has, I would very much like to know more). I think it's even more interesting for such a vain and shallow character to make such a decision. It's absolutely absurd and it would be impossible if it weren't for her financial stability—at the expense of being orphaned and receiving a handsome inheritance—it's all so outrageous and ironic!

A recommend for anyone who likes books that make it difficult for you to decide whether you hate them or love them.

2.75 stars
I expected something a lot more profound than this. I guess that the lack of depth was a conscious choice by the author but it just made the book bland in my opinion.

I liked some excerpts of the novel but mostly I was bored or grossed out by it. The main character is made out to be really unlikeable but, again, it felt too artificial.

From all the reviews I'd read I gathered that this would be a 5 stars for me. Alas, I was disappointed.

Huh. Well. That was a book.

I have no idea what to do with any of that.
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Coming back to this a week or so later to fill in some thoughts.

I found this book incredibly readable despite the paragraphs consisting entirely of drug names or actor names or movie titles sprinkled throughout. Despite it being very easy to read, the reading experience was rather uncomfortable. I think this was the intention to some degree. For me, it was a book that I didn't know what to do with upon completion. There were a lot of subjects that it touched upon and could have been about, but it didn't ever seem to commit to exploring any of them in any depth. It resulted in the impression that it didn't seem to have much to say for itself; but I found that I had a lot of reactions to it, both while I was reading and in the days after finishing it. I would catch myself thinking about the MC in ways that I didn't really expect of myself. The attitude of the MC toward her life, toward the people around her, with the context of her wealth and privilege, seemed to encourage me toward uncharitable opinion even despite all the traumas she endured. I think it's the flippancy with which she considers and discusses her traumas combined with the way she dismisses Reva's feelings about similar situations. Or maybe I'm just a worse person than I'd like to think. I suppose it did make me feel somewhat excused for my lapses in productivity, so there is that.

Overall it left me feeling like I didn't get it, but led to some interesting exercises in investigating my own reactions to it. I think I'm likely not sophisticated enough for contemporary litfic.