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Sleeping the Year Away with Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a book about trying to wake up

Mallika Vasak
Pomegranates
3 min readNov 22, 2023

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Image from NPR

In my mind, our narrator’s name is Emily, and most of the things that define her are farcical. Two large coffees with cream and six sugars. Multiple visits to a Bodega that never closes. Packages and packages of Victoria’s Secret. Whoopi Goldberg, white fox fur coats, and an endless stream of old movies playing before her narcotic, glassed-out eyes.

And then there are the things that aren’t. “Neuroproxin, Maxiphenphen, Valdignore, Silencior, Seconol, Nembutal, Valium, Librium, Placydil, Noctec, Miltown”: her arsenal of so-called pharmaceutical panaceas. Infermiterol, a fictitious remedy prescribed by her therapist a.k.a. quack, causing her to black out for days at a time. She is frustratingly solipsistic, belittling her best friend’s struggles to a speck of pen while her desire to sleep takes up a whole canvas. And this is the transformative vein that defines the plot: a year of nothing but deep, deep sleep.

For an author notorious for writing about the physical ugliness of her characters, Ottessa Moshfegh has written the most privileged, corporeally beautiful character with the most disagreeable nature. Despite sitting on an inheritance that would enable her to indulge in the abundance that is New York City…

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