She's unable to move beyond a degrading on-and-off relationship with a total creep, whom she keeps calling and texting pathetically. That's part of her problem: She's a lifelong outsider, and her parents' deaths left her well off financially, but emotionally strapped. The only one checking in on her is Reva, the bulimic best friend from college whom she finds more annoying than likeable. When not sleeping, she watches movies and eats animal crackers and Thai food between slipper-clad excursions to the corner bodega for bad coffee and RiteAid for prescription refills. Like the soused, wildly inappropriate 30-year-old math teacher in "Bettering Myself," the leadoff story in Moshfegh's Homesick for Another World, the narrator of R&R describes her daily routine in loving detail. And she's made a deal with herself: "If, when I woke up in June, life still wasn't worth the trouble, I would end it," she states unequivocally. But Moshfegh's narrator isn't lazy like Oblomov - in fact, she's single-mindedly goal-directed: She wants to sleep and sleep and sleep. In both cases, their disillusioned response to the hustle and bustle of daily life says something about their effete culture. Both lack worldly ambition and would gladly stay in bed round-the-clock. Like Oblomov, she's privileged with an excellent education, ample inherited wealth, and people to manage her estate. Moshfegh's self-proclaimed somniac and somnophile evokes Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov's classic 19th century Russian novel about profound lassitude and ennui - but only to a point, and in a twisted sort of way. This miserable young woman hopes she can hibernate for a year and literally lose herself - her haunting memories, obsessive thoughts, and acidic negativity - and emerge from her sleep-cure as "a whole new person." My Year of Rest and Relaxation is her hyper-articulate account of this disturbing, ultimately moving "self-preservational" project. How about going even further and taking a yearlong break from yourself and the world, courtesy of an extended nap? That's the desperate plan of the unnamed 24-year-old narrator of Ottessa Moshfegh's bizarrely fascinating second novel. Imagine taking a sabbatical, not just from your job, but from your life. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title My Year of Rest and Relaxation Author Ottessa Moshfegh
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