In this book, the general principle that you will feel better after a nap is here taken to its extreme. A young woman is tired and miserable, so she decides to go to sleep. For a year. She does this by finding an irresponsible psychiatrist and medicating herself in dangerous ways.
This lady is a major hater, and much of the enjoyment of this book is seeing how she goes about her hating. Let me make one extensive quotation to give you a flavour:
“Dudes” reading Nietzsche on the subway, reading Proust, reading David Foster Wallace, jotting down their brilliant thoughts into a black Moleskine pocket notebook. Beer bellies and skinny legs, zip-up hoodies, navy blue peacoats or army green parkas, New Balance sneakers, knit hats, canvas tote bags, small hands, hairy knuckles, maybe a deer head tattooed across a flabby bicep . . . They would come into Ducat, the gallery I ended up working at, with their younger—usually Asian—girlfriends. “An Asian girlfriend means the guy has a small dick,” Reva once said. I’d hear them talk shit about the art. They lamented the success of others. They thought that they wanted to be adored, to be influential, celebrated for their genius, that they deserved to be worshipped. But they could barely look at themselves in the mirror. They were all on Klonopin, was my guess.
Truly it was hilarious. There is lots of hating like this. I haven’t read pure joyful rage like this since LUCKY JIM (side bar, I bet there aren’t too many reviewers connecting those two books).
Of course the obvious question about this book is about the rent, and how she paid it. Answer, rich parents. You got to swallow that one down to enjoy the book, and it’s a tough one. But there you go: rich people even get to have better misery than poor people.
This aside, I enjoyed MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION, though fair warning, it does not resolve. At the end of the year, in the last few pages, she wakes up, suddenly feels better, and then, for no reason, 9/11 happens. I mean, I nearly laughed. Never mind, endings are hard.