wow. i finished this book just thinking “what the fuck did i just sit through??”. it’s definitely a good read, very much a “it’s a girl thing, you wouldn’t get it” sorta book. 

spoilers ahead:

after everything we go through with the MC, to get a glimpse of her new life after clawing her way through it. the drugs didn’t help, until they did when reva took them and snapped the MC back to reality with her purpose of taking these drugs. the entire time, i thought she was just going to spiral and OD, but she made it through. Reva gave her purpose, even in death. just wow. a mindfuck story about grief, girlhood, abusive relations all around, and relatable crude comments.

Very interesting book. A wild ride indeed. And as a person who has issues with my sleep, her descriptions of sleepiness and just wanting to enjoy her sleep felt very accurate and I could definitely empathize. I mean who doesn’t wish the world could just pause for a while so you can get yourself together. 

All I can muster to say after enduring this soulless afterbirth of a book is-

Fuck all the way off, Moshfegh (insert middle finger emoji here). 

Interesting as a character study, but hated the ending. Felt rushed and completely out of place because no other information in the story would have led you to that conclusion- and I say this as a New Yorker. It felt hastily picked 

So I had some time to think this book through. I gotta say, it really helped me to understand the themes in this book.

The biggest thing I eventually saw was the motif of Superficiality. 

Everyone around our narrator seems to be perfectly content with living in their own superficial and absurd realities:

Ping Xi comes on a painting, calls it art, and people flock to pay millions. 

Reva obsesses over her looks and others, hates her humble background, and basically wishes to be as rich and pretty as our protagonist.

However to our protagonist, beauty does not equal meaning. For example, the protagonists’ mother was characterized as beautiful. Yet she made nothing meaningful of her life and ended up dying with barely anyone recognizing.

Death is inevitable: why pretend to immortalize a momentarily beautiful grape in a painting when you know that it’s somewhere shriveled up and in the trash anyways?

The extreme narcissism and superficiality of beauty our narrator has been constantly surrounded by since birth impedes her ability to see the beauty in nuance or the simple things. 

Her year of rest led to her finding that meaning in the nuances of everyday life - You can put meaning to whatever you please. And in expunging those superficial lens that she was so accustomed to, she was finally allowed to finally see the meaning of life in itself.

Because the beauty of life truly lies in the little things: The ability to meet up and get coffee with a friend you haven’t seen in a while, seeing a cute squirrel on the sidewalk, hearing the sound of the ice cream truck.

Another thing: every time she read the news you would hear the most serious things happening like a war or a death followed effortlessly by the news of something unimportant but viral happening - both reported with the same cadence. Subtle, but I think shows the superficiality of people around her and even herself so much more.

The book was an addicting read and I absolutely love Moshfegh’s writing style. It was witty, gritty, and hilarious at so many points. How she is able to make a book about someone sleeping so enjoyable is beyond me.

However fun it was of a read, I was really wished to see more of her transformation following the year of rest. We’re told by her that the sleep was profound but I’m not shown how. Therefore the ending for me fell flat. 

I liked the story and laughed so hard at certain points, but it didn’t wow me. The disappointment with the ending and the lack of depth in the protagonist’s transformation dulled the impact of the story for me, hence the rating.

Nonetheless it was an enjoyable read.

Oof, this book.

As a mental health provider/ social worker- this book is fucked up. As a human who’s experienced grief, complex relationships, and death of a parent with whom you had a complicated relationship with…. I kind of get it? The desire to sleep for an extended period of time- with the goal of waking up refreshed, feeling new. The hope of restricting your life a bit. The unrealistic but tempting thought of slipping into a moment of life a year from now and seeing where you are after all the complicated growth is already behind you and previously explored. Granted- this takes it waaaaaay too far. 

This content and the story is MESSY, but the writing is very precise and intentional. I will absolutely pick up more of Ottessa Moshfegh’s work! Her writing propels you forward and it was difficult to put the book down. I wanted to know what happens next at the end of every page, because honestly I couldn’t guess where it was going next if I tried.

Devastating ending.

Of course Trevor survived- though I wish Reva did. She deserved better.

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".