Set in New York City during the year 2000, the narrative follows an unnamed narrator who decides to hibernate for an entire year. Despite her youth, physical beauty, and financial security inherited from her deceased parents, she suffers from a profound sense of alienation. Aided by a negligent psychiatrist named Dr. Tuttle, she consumes a rotating cocktail of hypnotics and sedatives to remain unconscious for as long as possible. She interacts only with her shallow best friend Riva and an older, disinterested lover, using chemicals to erase her conscious existence before the September 11 attacks.
Readers interested in dark satire and the psychological impact of consumerism will find this portrayal of urban isolation clinical and precise. It appeals to those who study the intersection of privilege and mental atrophy. The book provides a stark look at the failure of material success to provide meaning and the lengths to which a person might go to achieve total detachment from contemporary life. One finishes the text with a clear understanding of the difference between chemical numbness and genuine recovery.
Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?
Insights from My Year of Rest and Relaxation
“I was like a piece of meat that had been left out to rot.”
Sleeping for a year feels less like laziness and more like a protest. She just wants to press delete on her own history.
“Reva was like a fly. She was annoying. But she was also a living thing.”
Reva keeps showing up even when she is treated like garbage. It made me think about how much we tolerate just to feel less alone.
“Pain is not an entity. It is a state of being.”
Dr. Tuttle is a total disaster of a person. It is scary how easily we trust anyone with a degree and a prescription pad.
“I was beautiful and thin and possessed a certain coldness that people mistook for mystery.”
The narrator has so much money but zero reasons to stay awake. It proves that having everything on paper can still feel like nothing.
- Published
- 2018
- Language
- EN
