My Year Of Rest And Relaxation

I meant to read this before now because the reviews were very good but the storyline put me off. A young, pretty, privileged woman decides she's had enough of life and wants to take a break from it all for a year. Her parents have died within months of each other, one of cancer, the other by suicide. Her job at an art gallery didn't work out and her self-centred boyfriend doesn't want to see her anymore. She finds a psychiatrist who is liberal with prescription meds and retreats to her apartment with the drugs and a lot of DVDs (this is 2000-2001) and attempts to sleep for the next year but Reva, her troubled, bulimic friend from college, keeps showing up and disturbing her rest. Over time the drugs become less potent and she has to  have her quack doctor jack up the dosage and prescribe new ones. One of the new drugs is Infermiterol which causes blackouts during which she leaves her apartment and engages in behaviours of which she has no memory (although she does have polaroids). This messes with her goal of rest and relaxation. She engages the assistance of an artist she knows from her work at the gallery to make sure she does not leave the apartment when drugged. She tells him he can use it as an art project and he agrees to keep her locked in, to feed her pizza occasionally and not to tell anyone. Moshfegh nails depression. The unnamed protagonist does not want to live but she doesn't want to die. Will she emerge from this experience refreshed and ready to live again? This book is totally off the wall, both cringe-inducing and funny. I am surprised that I liked it as much as I did.

Read my review of Eileen, Moshfegh's Man Booker nominated first novel.