What a weird little book

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is one of those books where you can’t put it down, but when you’re done, you’re not entirely sure if you liked it (or even what just happened). But in the end, I do think I liked this one. It felt very…Margaret Atwood-esque.

“Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then—that when I’d slept enough, I’d be okay. I’d be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation.”

That’s basically the whole book, summed up right there. A young woman with money, no goals, and few relationships (a boyfriend who isn’t a boyfriend, a best friend who exists only to orbit her and complain) finds a psychiatrist in the phone book and embarks on a year of simply not existing. She lies to the psychiatrist — who’s insane, by the way, in a horribly entertaining way — and collects every medication she can to help her check out.

Which I get, honestly. The ability to just sleep — no bills, no work, no family, no obligations — is wildly appealing to me. I did find it very ironic that I chose this book to read on a mini-vacation of my own, during which I did little besides eat, sleep and run. But in the end, such a lifestyle is unsustainable and unsatisfactorily.

The writing here is great, too. I love this little ode to the trash chute.

“Having a trash chute was one of my favorite things about my building. It made me feel important, like I was participating in the world. My trash mixed with the trash of others. The things I touched touched things other people had touched. I was contributing, I was connecting.”

The author has published a few other books — I just picked up Eileen from the library and can’t wait to start it.