My Year of Rest and Relaxation

February 12, 2018
The latest from Booker finalist Moshfegh (following the story collection Homesick for Another World) is a captivating and disquieting novel about a woman's quest to sleep for a year. The unnamed narrator is in her 20s, lives alone on the Upper East Side, has plenty of money from her inheritance, and decides to hibernate with chemical assistance in the year 2000 in order to "drown out her thoughts" and avoid the world, since she "hate everyone and everything." Her only relationships are with the cashiers at her bodega, where she picks up meager supplies like coffee and animal crackers; her quack psychiatrist Dr. Tuttle, who dispenses pills like candy; and Trevor and Reva, her on-and-off boyfriend and college friend, respectively, neither of whom she likes much. For a while, the narrator's plan works: she takes "upwards of a dozen pills a day," watches movies on VHS, and willfully blanks out her life ("I was more of a somniac. A somnophile."). But when Dr. Tuttle's medication regimen intensifies and the narrator experiences strange, activity-filled blackouts from a drug called Infermiterol, she escalates her plan, with potentially fatal consequences. Though the novel drags a bit in the middle, leading up to the Infermiterol plan, it showcases Moshfegh's signature mix of provocation and dark humor. Following the narrator's dire trajectory is challenging but undeniably fascinating, likely to incite strong reactions and much discussion among readers.

Starred review from May 1, 2018
A young New York woman figures there's nothing wrong with existence that a fistful of prescriptions and months of napping wouldn't fix.Moshfegh's prickly fourth book (Homesick for Another World, 2017, etc.) is narrated by an unnamed woman who's decided to spend a year "hibernating." She has a few conventional grief issues. (Her parents are both dead, and they're much on her mind.) And if she's not mentally ill, she's certainly severely maladjusted socially. (She quits her job at an art gallery in obnoxious, scatological fashion.) But Moshfegh isn't interested in grief or mental illness per se. Instead, she means to explore whether there are paths to living that don't involve traditional (and wearying) habits of consumption, production, and relationships. To highlight that point, most of the people in the narrator's life are offbeat or provisional figures: Reva, her well-meaning but shallow former classmate; Trevor, a boyfriend who only pursues her when he's on the rebound; and Dr. Tuttle, a wildly incompetent doctor who freely gives random pill samples and presses one drug, Infermiterol, that produces three-day blackouts. None of which is the stuff of comedy. But Moshfegh has a keen sense of everyday absurdities, a deadpan delivery, and such a well-honed sense of irony that the narrator's predicament never feels tragic; this may be the finest existential novel not written by a French author. (Recovering from one blackout, the narrator thinks, "What had I done? Spent a spa day then gone out clubbing?...Had Reva convinced me to go 'enjoy myself' or something just as idiotic?") Checking out of society the way the narrator does isn't advisable, but there's still a peculiar kind of uplift to the story in how it urges second-guessing the nature of our attachments while revealing how hard it is to break them.A nervy modern-day rebellion tale that isn't afraid to get dark or find humor in the darkness.

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Starred review from June 1, 2018
The unnamed 24-year-old narrator of Moshfegh's (Homesick for Another World, 2017) intriguingly bizarre second novel decides to hibernate in 2000. For about a year, aided by a dizzying parade of pills, she'll treat the Manhattan apartment her inheritance bought her as her den. Her occasional boyfriend treats her horribly, her only friend, Reva, annoys her, and her job working in a Chelsea gallery is literally tiresome: she spends part of every workday napping in a supply closet. None of this is new, though; she has just finally made up her mind to embrace the slumber she so craves. As medications' effectiveness begin to wane, she invents symptoms and increasingly disturbing dreams to elicit ever-stronger medications from her dubiously qualified doctor, until she lands on Infermiterol. Just one pill took days of my life away. It was the perfect drug in that sense. Amidst her haze, which Moshfegh concocts with delirious clarity, the narrator recalls her dead parents?her mother, especially, resembles a fairy-tale villain?and doesn't disguise her inability to empathize with Reva, whose own mother is dying. Readers might have trouble getting her, but there is one thing they'll know that she doesn't, given the time and place. Propulsive, both disturbing and funny, and smart as hell.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

May 1, 2018

It's early 2000 on New York City's Upper East Side, and the alienation of Moshfegh's 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. Moshfegh is on familiar ground telling a dark story, saturated with a litany of descriptions reminiscent of Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho. VERDICT Interest in the narrator's long-lasting sleep trial may diminish before the novel ends, but her story is neither restful nor relaxing. The author's award-winning novel Eileen similarly portrayed a disturbed young woman seeking to escape her existence, but this work is not nearly as dark, though it's certainly as provocative and even occasionally funny. [See Prepub Alert, 1/22/18.]--Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018

Moshfegh's McGlue won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and Eileen the PEN/Hemingway Award; the recent collection Homesick for Another World was a New York Times Notable Book. In the latest spiky offering from this of-the-moment author, one the publisher hopes will break her out, a young woman's life seems glowy--she's got good looks, good credentials, a fun job, and an Upper East Side apartment. But with her parents dead and her boyfriend and best friend both trouble, she withdraws for a year of drug-induced grappling with her sense of being emptily out of step with the world.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.