SUMMARY "MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION"

  MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION

- Ottessa Moshfegh

    The protagonist, an unnamed woman with blonde hair and a slender frame, comes from a wealthy WASP family. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in art history. However, her life takes a tragic turn when both of her parents pass away during her senior year. Her father succumbs to cancer, and her mother tragically takes her own life due to a combination of psychiatric medication and alcohol. This leaves the narrator feeling lost and increasingly dissatisfied with her life.

    Living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the narrator seeks solace in the form of a psychiatrist named Dr. Tuttle. She fabricates symptoms of insomnia and depression to obtain a prescription for various drugs, which she hopes will help her sleep for extended periods. The narrator's plan is to sleep as much as possible, watching movies on her VCR to fill the waking hours until the machine finally breaks down.

    After losing her job at an art gallery, the narrator decides to live off her inheritance and unemployment benefits, using this time to sleep for a year in an attempt to reset her life. But her "year of rest and relaxation" is frequently disrupted by her college roommate, Reva. Despite the narrator's disdain for Reva's social climbing and Reva's own personal problems, she allows her to visit regularly.

    The narrator also maintains an on-again, off-again relationship with an older boyfriend named Trevor, a banker who works in the World Trade Center. Trevor often ends their relationship to date women his own age, but he returns to the narrator when his relationships fail or when she pleads with him.

    As the narrator's drug use escalates, she begins to engage in activities outside of her apartment while sleepwalking, such as visiting nightclubs and even attending Reva's mother's funeral. To regain control over her sleep and isolation, she asks an artist named Ping Xi to bring her food and supplies while she sleeps. In exchange, he can create any art he desires in her apartment, as long as he leaves no trace of his presence before she wakes.

    The narrator sleeps until June 1, 2001. When she finally wakes up, she slowly begins to re-enter society, spending time in a local park and furnishing her apartment with second-hand furniture. Her outlook on life has changed, and she no longer harbors contempt for Reva. She even reciprocates Reva's declarations of love, though Reva herself has grown distant.

    

    On September 11, 2001, Trevor is on his honeymoon in Barbados, but Reva dies in the terror attacks on the World Trade Center. The narrator, who has been watching the news coverage on her new VCR, believes she sees Reva jumping from the North Tower, and this tragic event further alters her perception of the world around her.

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