The year is 2000, the place is downtown Manhattan. Our protagonist is young, beautiful and rich. She has a degree in art history from a prestigious university and a job at a trendy art gallery. On the face of it, she is living the Manhattan dream, but she is deeply unhappy. All she wants is to sleep. Her theory is that her cells will renew themselves that way, that she will thus become a new person. So she locks herself into her apartment, takes staggering amounts of sedatives, uppers, downers, antipsychotics and sleeping pills and tries to find her new self.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation has a few things going for it. For one, it is very funny – not in a laugh out loud way, but absurdist, almost Pynchonesque, for example in the exchanges the protagonist has with her equally disturbed psychiatrist. The psychiatrist believes in holistic healing and is also a shaman. That doesn’t stop her from prescribing what amounts to an entire pharmacy to our main character. In fact, that is her main appeal. The main character pops pills like other people cook; a dash of this and a cup of that to reach the perfect state.
Other pills leave the main character without her memory for days at a time. She awakes in her apartment and discovers polaroids of herself at parties. There are shopping bags full of expensive lingerie. At one point, a massive white fur coat turns up.
The book takes a scathing approach to the lifestyle of 2000-era Manhattanites. Mundane items like Chinese take-out are described in the most unappealing way (white wine, for example, is ‘piss-coloured’). Our protagonist is universally despised for being exactly what the world around her wants her to be. She has one single friend, Reva; the two seem to spend most of the time side by side, talking to themselves rather than each other. It is unclear whether they even like each other, or enjoy each other’s company. It’s an interesting examination of female friendships when an element of competition is involved. Not that the main character wants the competition; in fact, she wants to sleep so she can opt out of the life that her friend Reva has: a high-pressure job, bulimia, and a married lover. We also know the novel will end when the twin towers – where Reva works – come down.
I wouldn’t describe this as an enjoyable read, per se, and I’m not sure what the takeaway is here – that the art scene is corrupt and ridiculous, or that we make life too difficult for ourselves, or as a tale of gender inequality. Maybe it’s all of those things. Either way, it’s an interesting book.