Thanks to @penguinpress for gifting an advanced copy of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh to review! It came out last week and you might have seen in my stories, I recommend this one to anyone who loves darkly comic stories about fucked up people making terrible decisions.
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Fans of Moshfegh’s previous novel Eileen will be delighted with this one, I think! I loved that one until the ending, and My Year of Rest and Relaxation has a MUCH stronger ending, but has the same hypnotic prose that keeps you turning the pages like no tomorrow.
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If you’re looking for a book with likeable characters then look elsewhere, but if you love hating on characters then you’ll have a field day here: the unnamed narrator is unlikeable herself (but you sort of grow a bit affectionate towards her), but she is surrounded by vapid, selfish, stuck up, pretentious rich people, fuelling her desire to shut herself away for a year to sleep...
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There isn’t much in the way of plot, but as a fan of character-driven stories I couldn’t get enough of the introspective narrative that takes a twisted look at mental illness, toxic relationships, and in depth study of one, seemingly perfect, woman’s precarious existence.