Wednesday, September 5, 2018

My Year of Rest and Relaxation; Ottessa Moshfegh


AUTHOR: Ottessa Moshfegh
PUBLISHER: Penguin Audio
PUB. YEAR: 2018
SETTING: NYC
FORMAT:  - Audio Download- Publisher
RATING: 3.5/5 stars


What do we know about our unnamed narrator? She's 26, young, thin, pretty and a recent graduate of Columbia University in New York City. She works in a Chelsea art gallery and has a Wall Street boyfriend who was kind of a jerk. She also has a love/hate relationship with her best friend Reva.  

With her wealthy parents, now decreased, our narrator,  when caught sleeping on the job, decides to quit her job, deciding and take a break from it all.  A year to be alone, away from all that is familiar to her so that she can just rest and relax.  With the assistance with a nutty psychiatrist and her dead mother's personal stash of pills, everything from cough syrup, tranquilizers, pain pills and other psychotropic drugs, she takes a break from life. How does her story end? You'll just have to read or listen to this one to find out.

Extremely creative, well-written, cynical and engaging, this book was also oftentimes crude and a bit over the top. Maybe, I'm just getting too old to appreciate a story of this nature. The fact of the matter, I loved the dark nature of the author debut novel, Eileen, so I guess I was expecting to enjoy this book much more than I did.

18 comments:

  1. I wasn't crazy about this one either. The crudeness just got to me after a while. I felt like I was too old as well.

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  2. If you are too old for this, I am giving it a miss. I think I would also get annoyed at someone rich enough to take a year off to just sit and relax. :-)

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  3. I am so torn about reading this. I heard a podcast with her and she came across as extremely intelligent. Also sometimes I want to take time off from life, though I could not take all those drugs! So it sounds like she got to you in one way and put you off in another.

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    1. OMG - I only touched on all the drugs she got her hands on so she could forget it all and sleep.

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  4. I have been on the fence about reading this one. Still not sure. I think it would be hard for those of us that come from a different generation to think 'I'll just take a year and relax and medicate myself into sleep all the time'. I know people actually do this, maybe not on purpose, but still. I'm not a big fan of taking medication though.

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    1. Me either Kay, I try to make lemonade when life hands me lemons - usually works.

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  5. I don't like crude, so I'll pass.

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  6. Too bad this one didn't live up to its promise. It sounded good in theory. ;-) What can go wrong taking so many mind-altering medications?! :-)

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  7. On my TBR pile. I haven't read this author before.

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  8. Thanks for sharing your honest thoughts about this audio book, Diane. Eileen sounds like a better "fit" for me as well.

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  9. I loved Eileen so I'm looking forward to this one although sorry to hear this one didn't quite live up to it!

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