My Year of Rest and Relaxation Summary: A Year of Sleep
Introduction
What would you do if you could sleep away an entire year? For the unnamed narrator of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, this question becomes a literal plan.
Set in Manhattan during the pre-9/11 Y2K era, the novel follows a young, wealthy Columbia graduate who decides to withdraw from modern life entirely.
After losing both parents during college, she devises a radical experiment: hibernating for a full year through prescription drugs, hoping to emerge reborn.
The book examines grief, alienation, and the lengths one woman will go to escape her own consciousness.
It is a character-driven psychological novel with a deadpan, darkly satirical tone.
TL;DR: Quick Snapshot
- Premise: A wealthy, emotionally detached young woman in Manhattan decides to sleep for a year using prescription sedatives.
- Protagonist: An unnamed 24-year-old art history graduate who lost both parents during college.
- Key Elements: An unethical psychiatrist, a toxic best friend, an emotionally manipulative ex-boyfriend, and an experimental drug causing blackouts.
- Structure: Seven chapters spanning summer 2000 to summer 2001, organized around drug routines and sleep cycles.
- Ending: The narrator completes her hibernation and experiences a shift in her emotional state.
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Is This Book for You?
My Year of Rest and Relaxation may appeal to readers who are interested in:
- Literary fiction with an unreliable narrator and an antiheroine protagonist.
- Psychological fiction examining grief, trauma, and mental health.
- Dark satire of modern life, consumerism, and the art world.
- Character-driven narratives with internal conflict and episodic plotting.
- Stories set in New York City during the pre-9/11 Y2K era.
The novel features a deadpan, cynical tone and a detached narrative voice. The pacing is structured around drug routines and sleep cycles rather than a traditional plot arc.
Readers who prefer fast-paced, plot-driven stories may find the narrative style slower and more introspective.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation Summary: What Happens in the Book
Spoilers ahead.
The narrator is a 24-year-old woman living on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She graduated from Columbia with an art history degree and inherited substantial wealth after both parents died during her junior year. Her father died of cancer, and her mother died of an overdose six weeks later.
After graduation, she works as a gallery girl at Ducat, a Chelsea contemporary art gallery. The gallery exhibits shock art, including paintings made from bodily fluids and taxidermied dogs with lasers. The narrator finds the work meaningless and naps in the supply closet each afternoon.
One night in spring 2000, she wakes up locked inside the gallery after hours. She defecates on the floor and wipes herself with tissues stuffed into a taxidermied poodle’s mouth.
She leaves the job, files for unemployment, and resolves to hibernate for a year.
Her plan requires heavy sedatives. She finds Dr. Tuttle, an eccentric psychiatrist, in the Yellow Pages. Dr. Tuttle prescribes an alarming array of drugs including Seroquel, Lithium, Xanax, Ambien, and Valium under a philosophy she calls “ecoscripting.”
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The narrator structures her life around sedation. She drinks bad coffee to trigger anxiety, then crashes into sleep. She leaves her apartment only for prescriptions, bodega supplies, and occasional movie rentals.
Two people repeatedly disrupt her isolation. Reva is her best friend from college, an insecure, bulimic executive assistant having an affair with her married boss. Trevor is her toxic ex-boyfriend who works at the World Trade Center and uses her for sex between relationships.
By autumn 2000, the narrator develops a tolerance to her medications. Dr. Tuttle provides samples of an experimental German drug called Infermiterol.
The drug causes days-long blackouts during which her unconscious body performs elaborate activities.
During these blackouts, she shops at Bloomingdale’s, gets manicures, chats online, and goes clubbing. Around Christmas, Reva’s mother dies of cancer.
During an Infermiterol blackout, the narrator attends the funeral in Long Island and stays by Reva’s side.
Reva later reveals that Ken ended their affair and transferred her to the World Trade Center. She also discovers the narrator’s pill stash and steals it. In early 2001, the narrator contacts Ping Xi, a shock artist from her former gallery.
She offers him a deal: he will lock her inside her apartment for four months, supplying food and Infermiterol. In return, he can use her unconscious body as a model for his art. From February through May 2001, she undergoes continuous three-day sleep cycles.
On June 1, 2001, the narrator wakes up permanently. She steps into the summer sun and finds her experiment has succeeded. The weight of her past has lifted, and she feels calm and capable of genuine emotion.
Over the summer, she refurnishes her apartment with cheap items, sells her parents’ house, and feeds squirrels in the park. In late August, Reva visits before starting her new job at the World Trade Center.
The two women share a warm moment and exchange “I love you” before parting.
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Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| The Unnamed Narrator | A 24-year-old wealthy Columbia graduate living on the Upper East Side who plans a year-long medicated hibernation. |
| Reva | The narrator’s best friend from college, an executive assistant who is bulimic and status-obsessed. |
| Dr. Tuttle | An eccentric psychiatrist who prescribes heavy sedatives to the narrator under her theory of “ecoscripting.” |
| Trevor | The narrator’s toxic ex-boyfriend who works in finance at the World Trade Center. |
| Natasha | The narrator’s glamorous boss at the Ducat gallery who fires her for sleeping on the job. |
| Ping Xi | A shock artist who agrees to serve as the narrator’s warden during her locked hibernation. |
| The Narrator’s Mother | A cold, emotionally abusive alcoholic who died of an overdose. |
| The Narrator’s Father | A distant university professor who died of cancer during the narrator’s junior year. |
| Ken | Reva’s married boss with whom she has an affair. |
What Drives the Story: Themes and Ideas
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
|---|---|
| Grief and Trauma | The narrator’s unprocessed pain following her parents’ deaths drives her decision to hibernate. Reva’s grief over her mother’s death from cancer parallels this. |
| Alienation and Escape | The protagonist deliberately uses pharmaceutical drugs to escape waking consciousness, modern social demands, and personal history. |
| Superficiality and Class Privilege | Reva’s obsession with body image and fashion, the pretension of the Chelsea art market, and the narrator’s inheritance enable her self-isolation. |
| Co-dependency and Toxic Relationships | The envious dynamic between the narrator and Reva, and the narrator’s emotionally abusive cycle with Trevor, illustrate unhealthy attachments. |
| Medicalization and Consumerism | Dr. Tuttle’s reckless over-prescription of drugs and the characters’ reliance on shopping, junk food, and media to cope with existence. |
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Books Like My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh — Another novel by the same author exploring psychological isolation and a young woman’s desire to escape her life.
- Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh — A short story collection featuring alienated characters navigating uncomfortable realities.
- McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh — A novella centered on a tormented protagonist grappling with memory loss and confinement.
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath — Explores psychological distress, societal pressures on young women, and mental health struggles.
- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata — Features a deadpan, socially detached female protagonist navigating modern societal expectations.
Book Snapshot
- Genre & Subgenre: Literary Fiction / Psychological Fiction / Dark Contemporary Satire
- Core Narrative Tropes: Unreliable narrator, antiheroine, social isolation, psychological breakdown and rebirth, toxic friendship
- Tone & Atmosphere: Deadpan, cynical, claustrophobic, detached, darkly comedic, melancholic
- Primary Conflict: Person vs. Self / Person vs. Society
- Pacing Style: Character-driven, episodic, internal
- Book Structure: Seven numbered chapters
- ISBN-10: 0525522131
- ISBN-13: 978-0525522133
- Pages: 304
- Publisher: Penguin Books
- Publication Date: June 25, 2019 (Reprint Edition)
Quotes from My Year of Rest and Relaxation
“My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life.”
— Narrator
“Oh, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.”
— Narrator
“When I’d slept enough, I’d be okay. I’d be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories.”
— Narrator
“Studied grace is not grace. Charm is not a hairstyle. You either have it or you don’t. The more you try to be fashionable, the tackier you’ll look.”
— Narrator
“Reva was like the pills I took. They turned everything, even hatred, even love, into fluff I could bat away.”
— Narrator
“Pain is not the only touchstone for growth, I said to myself. My sleep had worked. I was soft and calm and felt things. This was good. This was my life now.”
— Narrator
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