The Book of the month for March was My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh. The Big Review is below.
***Big Reviews are written from the point of view that you have read the book. If this is not yet you, bookmark the page and come back once you have***
Rest and Relaxation – the blurb
On the surface, our narrator has everything you could want in life. She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance.
But there is a vacuum in her life and she’s got the perfect solution. She’s going to take a year under sedation to relax and hide away from the world.
What could possibly go wrong?
Take a pill, sleep, repeat
I’ll start by saying I found this book very disturbing. I get that the topic matter isn’t joyful (mental illness and social status) but it’s not a comfortable read and the characters are not very likeable. The narrator’s lack of self preservation worried me alongside friends, professionals and lovers who blatantly overlooked her struggles for their own good. It’s certainly original and intriguing, not least it’s from its cover. It’s also very modern and very New York. But overall I found it depressing to read and a bit baffling.
The ending however struck me. I get there is a lot of symbolism going on here (awakenings, the tumbling down of New York’s excesses) but the image of Reva falling to her death certainly stayed with me for a while. It’s the first book I have read that has referenced the twin towers without actually being about 9/11 or its after effect and I liked how, without diluting it’s horror at all, the terror attack was just part of the story, part of New York.
There are no doubt discussion points to rest and relaxation making it a good book club book. Not least how much research Moshfegh must have done to write about all the drugs so competently – it made my head buzz just reading their names. But it’s definitely not my type of rest and relaxation!
Get Involved
If you would like to get involved with the Book Of The Month choices try answering the Book Club questions published every month. Just search in the footnotes section for the ‘Get Involved’ articles. A new book is chosen every month so keep your eyes peeled for the Lowdown on Aprils book of the month soon.
