My Year of Rest and Relaxation

About My Year of Rest

Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) is a darkly comic standalone novel about a beautiful, privileged young woman in New York City who decides to spend a year in a chemically induced sleep, funded by her inheritance and enabled by a psychiatrist who prescribes her increasingly powerful medications. Set in 2000–2001 and ending just before September 11, the novel is Moshfegh's most widely read and is celebrated for its nihilistic wit, unreliable narrator, and unflinching portrait of depression and desire.