6/24/2023 0 Comments My year of rest and![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The journey undergone by Moshfegh’s narrator in 2000-2001 New York is something of an anti-fever dream. I even read it, most fittingly, while waiting for a pharmacist to fill my prescriptions, most of which are used at one point by the unnamed narrator of “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” in her never-ending quest for the perfect sleep. I read it at the park by my apartment while my sister played Animal Crossing on her Nintendo Switch. I read it in grocery store and post office and Target lines and in the passenger seat of moving cars. I felt the book’s absence whenever I wasn’t reading it, and I read each page carefully and often multiple times because I was afraid of reaching the end. I read it in bed, I read it at my desk, I read it on the floor, I read it on the living room couch while my roommate watched the BBC production of “As You Like It.” This past June I read Ottessa Moshfegh’s second novel, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation.” I read it everywhere. Ottessa Moshfegh, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” There was a fine mathematics for how to mete out sedation.” Achieving that state took heavy dosages of Seroquel or lithium combined with Xanax, and Ambien or trazodone, and I didn’t want to overuse those prescriptions. I’d catch myself not breathing, slumped on the sofa, staring at an eddy of dust tumbling across the hardwood floor in the draft, and I’d remember that I was alive for a second, then fade back out. “My favorite days were the ones that barely registered. ![]()
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