I’ve literally just finished this novel, and am writing this before the prose has had time to dry in my mind. I feel that this is what the unnamed ‘protagonist’ of My Year of Rest and Relaxation would want. The only thing that would please her more would be if I had dry-swallowed my last musty Seroquel (collecting dust since 2008) from my jewelry box before turning on my laptop.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation reads like one long, babbling sentence. It had very little in the way of ‘plot’ or ‘pacing’. Its foreshadowing is as subtle as a sledge hammer. The story of our unnamed hibernator is ponderous, as she tries to medicate herself into a 365 days of slumber. She vaguely accounts for how she found her psychiatrist/drug dealer and how she survived the experiment. Her vanity and unkindness is off-putting and the people around her are just as terrible as she is.
… but I was somehow rooting for her. I found the muted stakes to be nevertheless engaging. I wanted her sleep experiment to work. I longed to hear more about her relationship with her parents. I feel like she tricked me as she did with everyone, but I am not mad at her for that. She’s well aware of her power to engage. She’s a beautiful creature, shrouded in manufactured mystery. It’s not until you pop out the other side that you realise there really is not all that much there, beyond privilege and an inevitable case of scurvy. But that’s exactly what she was aiming for.
The experience of our unnamed protagonist is probably the envy of a certain demographic. Over a decade ago, I admit to spending more time than I should in the shrouded murk of Ambien, waking up covered in cookie crumbs and confusion. Had someone offered me the ways and means of sleeping off a year, I would have greedily accepted. Perhaps this was why I was able to connect with the novel. The author deep-dived to explore a notion I previously never thought to entertain. To some, this might be triggering. To me, it provided a few hours of voyeuristic satisfaction. I’m pleased to have marinated in this novel for a few hours.
I had to subtract one star from my review because I do feel somewhat cheapened by the aforementioned foreshadowing in the book. Setting the location to New York and the timing for the early naughties seems cheap. The repeated references to the Twin Towers and World Trade Centre was unnecessary. Was the author trying to garner more intrigue for the main character? Did she want us to note the passing 2001 dates with growing unease? Was she trying to ‘punch up’ the emotional intensity of the otherwise meandering storytelling? Ever since seeing the bizarre and shoe-horned ending of the movie ‘Remember Me’ (Robert Pattison’s underwhelming foray into the Romance genre), I’ve been wary of people using that tragedy to amp up their works of fiction. It feels a little like the author is guilty of similar sins here.
Overall, 4 yawning stars.