Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

209 reviews

bunnoid's review against another edition

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dark
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

my year of sedation and being a shitty friend and person

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nhacco's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

I tried. I really did try to like this or to find in it something deep and layered. I tried to focus on the depression aspect of it, to connect and relate to the main character who is clearly depressed. But this book was really hard to get through. It’s short but it’s still too long. For the first half, it felt like the author just decided to see how many random stories that made no sense she could come up with, in order to impress you with how hot and thin and lacking in empathy the main character is. It’s really exhausting and zero percent interesting. If anything, it made me feel like her - bored and completely immune to feeling anything (while reading). 
Then the second half is really just very long paragraphs of sentences and memories and imagery and thoughts the main character has, but it’s not the least bit interesting because this character is not interesting. Being edgy and mean and detached is not interesting. It felt mainly like the author just wanted an excuse to indulge her own thoughts and ideas, thinking they would be of any interest to anyone else. 
And the story has no point. Just a
privileged girl that is bored with life so decides to give herself an addiction to sleeping pills to sleep for days at a time and black out and do things while out of it for months that she can’t remember (so we have no idea what happens) and then wakes up and feels like a normal person at last
. Extremely uninteresting and with no moral or point whatsoever. I thought this was going to be about a girl going on an eat pray love year lol

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krosebooks's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Majority of the book is kinda a sleep haze. The writing style is uniquely weird like a dream that doesn’t make any sense. She transforms her self harm into a form of meditation, letting her subconscious do the work. 

The ending is amazingly dark and beautiful. 

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hurricaneherder's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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leneliest's review against another edition

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dark hopeful sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0


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mjtal's review against another edition

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dark sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5


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molarbear31's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5


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the_neeerd's review against another edition

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emotional tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I was recommended this book in a list of "books where the main character is a very strange woman" or something to that effect, and that person was correct. I think that is how it should be described. The main character doesn't get named and I only just realized that, because I was so drawn in by the fact that everyone in this story is just horrible. None of them have any characterization, but at the same time, they're all so different. Listening to the audiobook was a good call I think, because it was a level of immersion that made the story connect on a deeper level. I'm not saying that if you wake up at 4am, you should play the audio book, but I am saying that doing that is going to minmax your experience of it. And it made me feel a whole lot better about bedrotting over winter break because I could say "at least I'm not doing that". 

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littleseal's review against another edition

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- My dumbass thinking Infermiterol was really a medication (I am a therapist that knows some medications but clearly was "tricked" to think this was, lol)
- There is something so interesting about the writing that it was hard to put down sometimes
- I knew, <i>knew</i> what the ending was going to be;
The book was set in 2000, and knew it'd go into 2001 and it would relate back to 9/11

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ktc97's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I had previously read another Moshfegh and didn’t love it, but was so pleasantly surprised by this one. I feel like Moshfegh’s strengths shine through when her dark writing is accompanied by some relief. This one had a ton of hilarious satire and a compassionate message at the end. 

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