My Year of Rest and Relaxation

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

New York Times Bestseller • A Best Book of the Year by Time, NPR, The Guardian, and More
A razor-sharp, darkly comic novel about privilege, numbness, and the quest for escape, from one of the boldest voices in contemporary literary fiction.

What if sleeping for a year could fix everything?

In My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh crafts a brilliantly disturbing portrait of a young woman who, armed with a toxic mix of prescription drugs and indifference, decides to check out of life for a year. Her plan? To erase pain, grief, and disillusionment by sleeping through the worst of it.

Set in early-2000s New York City, the unnamed narrator is wealthy, beautiful, and recently graduated from Columbia. She has everything society says should make her happy—an Upper East Side apartment, a trust fund, a job at a hip art gallery. But she’s emotionally hollow, disenchanted with the world, and eager to disappear. Under the dubious care of a wildly unethical psychiatrist and a mountain of medications, she embarks on a yearlong experiment in self-erasure and avoidance, with results as twisted as they are oddly cathartic.

Moshfegh’s signature biting prose, bleak humor, and emotional precision make this novel a cult favorite among readers of transgressive fiction. Both an unsettling critique of consumerism and a strangely relatable portrait of burnout and depression, this novel asks: What does healing look like in a world that feels impossible to endure?

💊 Perfect for fans of Bunny, The Bell Jar, and Milk Fed
💊 A viral BookTok favorite and staple in contemporary dark fiction
💊 Explores themes of alienation, privilege, grief, and identity through sharp, satirical storytelling

Format: Paperback 
Genre: Literary Fiction, Satire, Psychological Fiction
Themes: Mental Health, Depression, Self-Destruction, Feminism, Isolation
Audience: Readers of bold, edgy fiction; millennials seeking darkly relatable reads; fans of provocative female-led narratives

✨ My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a compelling exploration of detachment, disillusionment, and the desire to disappear, told with unmatched style and unsettling insight.