My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Ottessa Moshfegh (2018)
“A beautiful, wealthy young woman tries to sleep through an entire year of her life — and the reader can't look away.”
Why This Book Matters
Published in 2018, the novel became an immediate cultural phenomenon — particularly among millennial and Gen Z readers who recognized in its narrator their own exhaustion with performative wellness, productivity culture, and the demand to be constantly present. It arrived at the peak of the 'self-care' discourse and detonated it: the narrator's sleep project is self-care taken to its logical, absurd, devastating conclusion.
Firsts & Innovations
One of the first post-2008 novels to treat female passivity and withdrawal as philosophically serious rather than pathological
Pioneered a new model of the 'unlikable female narrator' — not merely flawed but actively repellent, yet irresistibly readable
One of the first literary novels to use 9/11 not as subject but as structural device — the event that ruptures the narrative rather than driving it
Cultural Impact
Became a defining text of 'millennial literature' alongside Sally Rooney and Jenny Offill
The phrase 'my year of rest and relaxation' entered cultural shorthand for opting out of capitalist productivity
Sparked widespread debate about the ethics of writing 'unlikable' women — and why we demand likability of female characters
TikTok and BookTok adoption made it one of the most-discussed literary novels of the late 2010s
Influenced a wave of contemporary fiction featuring female narrators who refuse to perform wellness or ambition
Banned & Challenged
Not widely banned, but frequently challenged in university settings for its unflinching depictions of drug use, its protagonist's casual cruelty, and its refusal to moralize about either. Some critics have objected to the 9/11 ending as exploitative — a debate Moshfegh has declined to engage with.