Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2019
Told with the same unique combination of candour,biting black humour and insightful human understanding that caught readers'attention in her Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Eileen,My Year of Rest and Relaxation is shock-factor fiction at its finest.
Infermiterol: For when you don't want to get up until it's over.
Beautiful,young,successful and wealthy,the novel's narrator lives in an endless bubble of social engagements,caught up in the heady thrill of early 2000's New York. Superficially her life is perfect but there is a void at the centre of her world.
Fuelled by an unscrupulous psychiatrist - a wonderfully grotesque figure - she begins a regimented programme of hibernation; induced and sustained by a cocktail of narcotics and aided by an avant-garde artist chronicling her descent into self-created somnolence.
Ably considering the relationship between the deceptively shimmering surface and what lies beneath,Ottessa Moshfegh's second novel perfectly depicts a generation poised on the brink of 9/11 whilst holding up a mirror to the crises of our own fragmented,overloaded and superficially motivated times. As the New York Times comments,'though this novel is set nearly 20 years ago,it feels current. The thought of sleeping through this particular moment in the world's history has appeal.'Extraordinary accomplished,My Year of Rest and Relaxation demonstrates the prodigious talents of an author willing to look squarely at uncomfortable,unlikeable characters and themes with unflinching candour. It is surely the work of one of America's most exciting young writers.
Publisher: Vintage PublishingISBN: 9781784707422Number of pages: 304Weight: 220 gDimensions: 196 x 130 x 17 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'A whip-smart dissection of American culture'- The Daily Telegraph
'The book that everybody's talking about... I read it and was entranced.'- The Times
'This is the first book I couldn't put down this year... Almost offensive with its close-to-the-bone truths,it's shockingly relatable. And legitimately laugh-out-loud funny. Ottessa Moshfegh is sharp,savage and hilarious.'- Isabel Dexter,Elle
'The superabundantly talented...Moshfegh's sentences are piercing and vixenish... she is always a deep pleasure to read.'- The New York Times
'My Year of Rest and Relaxation is whip-smart,continuously compelling,and acerbic in all the right ways.'- The Daily Telegraph
'Electrifying... (Moshfegh) is adept at crafting compelling female characters who violate the rules of femininity... Moshfegh's protagonist is an unlikely revolutionary.'- Vanity Fair
'A relentlessly savage fable of privilege and pain... While we're laughing,we feel disgust. It's a combination that makes for diamond-hard entertainment.'-The Guardian
'Darkly hilarious... (Moshfegh's) the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.'- Vogue
'(My Year of Rest and Relaxation is) a laugh-out-loud page-turner... it's also the best 9/11 novel I've read.'- Emily Wilson,The Times Literary Supplement
'Moshfegh's blackly funny new novel... (hits) multiple marks at once: as an art-school prank,a between-the-lines tale of displaced grief and a pitiless anatomy of gender injustice,it also offers... a dark state-of-America fable.'- Anthony Cummins,The Observer
'Ottessa Moshfegh's unnerving and compelling new novel,My Year of Rest and Relaxation... percussively hammered out in her flawless,rhythmic prose... concludes with a startlingly,unexpectedly beautiful passage... radical,urgent,and more painfully wise than perhaps we would like to admit.'- Sam Byers,The Times Literary Supplement
Kommentar