A Beautifully Strange and Sad Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

There is a weirdness,a paranoia, that I particularly like in Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories. They operatein extreme conditions, somewhere between disgust and immense sadness. Herstories are strange and devastating, beautifully devastating. In a certainsense, throughout her books, the present is aplace that the narrators tend not to want to be, they rather be in another place,in another timeline.

The narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a blonde, thin, pretty and financially independent young woman. She lives in Yorkville, Upper East Side NY and she is trapped in bleak, punishing circumstances.  She has lost both her parents in a short space of time and she is trapped in a manipulating, ferocious and punishing relationship with an older man.  

The book is painful, you can sensethe depth of her grief and suffering, but more of that of being someone whodoes not know how to exist in that space and time, who wants out of her sadnessand depression. The young woman seems vulnerable but her vulnerability is also her power and sleep, enforced and distressed as it is, it is her way out.  Sleep becomes a cathartic experience, a way to heal her emotional wounds. When she finally awakes, she has escaped not only death but also her past, she is a new person living in another time and place.

I am very excited by the work of Ottessa Moshfegh, it’s weird, almost surreal. Reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation, especially at the end, I couldn’t move, I was completely absorbed. You know that in the few pages something awful is going to happen but you can’t stop reading.  It is a powerful experience.