Recommendations
Books Like My Year of Rest
What to read after My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a darkly comic novel about depression, nihilism, and the desire to disappear — narrated by an unnamed, self-destructive young woman in New York City. These eight books share that same quality of dark wit, unreliable narration, and unflinching interiority.
- 1Buy
Normal People
by Sally Rooney
An Irish love story told with the same quality of unflinching, close interiority — two people who damage each other while unable to fully articulate why; quieter than Moshfegh but equally interested in the gap between feeling and communication
- 2Buy
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
The most devastating novel about depression, self-destruction, and the limits of love in recent literature — if you want the emotional register of My Year of Rest taken to an extreme, this is it
- 3Buy
The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath
Esther Greenwood's mental breakdown and hospitalization in 1950s New York — the canonical literary novel about female depression and the desire to escape from one's own life that My Year of Rest is in dialogue with
- 4Buy
Eileen
by Ottessa Moshfegh
Moshfegh's Booker-shortlisted debut — a miserable young woman in 1960s Massachusetts with an alcoholic father and a disturbing inner life; the same voice as My Year of Rest but darker and more violent
- 5Buy
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
Elite students at a Vermont college who commit a murder — the same quality of mordant wit, the same interiority of people who are intelligent enough to see their own destruction clearly and continue anyway
- 6Buy
Conversations with Friends
by Sally Rooney
Rooney's debut — a twenty-one-year-old in Dublin who begins an affair with a married man; same flat, observational prose and same interest in emotional paralysis and the question of what intimacy actually is
- 7Buy
How to Murder Your Life
by Cat Marnell
A memoir about prescription drug addiction and working in fashion media — nonfiction but shares My Year of Rest's combination of extreme privilege, self-destruction, and deadpan observation of how beautiful life can look from outside and how empty from inside
- 8Buy
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
by Gail Honeyman
A deeply isolated young woman who lives on a rigidly fixed routine and has been avoiding something terrible — the same close first-person interiority of someone who appears functional while being anything but
More My Year of Rest Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.