Listen free for 30 days

  • My Year of Rest and Relaxation

  • Written by: Ottessa Moshfegh
  • Narrated by: Julia Whelan
  • Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (269 ratings)

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation cover art

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Written by: Ottessa Moshfegh
Narrated by: Julia Whelan
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $23.31

Buy Now for $23.31

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Amazon,Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible

A New York Times Bestseller

“One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh’s] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.”—Vogue

From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes.

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

©2018 Ottessa Moshfegh (P)2018 Penguin Audio

What the critics say

“I don't think I'm ever going to get over Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation.”—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

“Ottessa Moshfegh is easily the most interesting contemporary American writer on the subject of being alive when being alive feels terrible. She has a freaky and pure way of accessing existential alienation, as if her mind were tapped directly into the sap of some gnarled, secret tree. . . . Watching Moshfegh turn her withering attention to the gleaming absurdities of pre-9/11 New York City, an environment where everyone except the narrator seems beset with delusional optimism, horrifically carefree, feels like eating bright, slick candy—candy that might also poison you.”—Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker

“Darkly comic and ultimately profound new novel. . . . Moshfegh’s extraordinary prose soars as it captures her character’s re-engagement.”—Vendela Vida, New York Times Book Review

What listeners say about My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    134
  • 4 Stars
    70
  • 3 Stars
    39
  • 2 Stars
    15
  • 1 Stars
    11
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    163
  • 4 Stars
    42
  • 3 Stars
    9
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    101
  • 4 Stars
    57
  • 3 Stars
    35
  • 2 Stars
    11
  • 1 Stars
    14

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

the imagery

i really liked this book, you can picture a lot of what’s going on in the book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

amazing book

loved it and the person reading it! very dark, but smart and witty and very engaging.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Wow! I am blown away.

My daughter read the book obsessively, raved about it. So I decided to lean in and see what the book was about. I feel like I want to paint, write and expand. Essentially, I am inspired. Highly recommend this listen. As always Julia’s voice is a dream to listen to. I want to listen to more books by Ottessa.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Amy
  • 2022-12-28

Loved it

Loved it. Perfectly paints depression in melancholy and darkly funny manner. But not everyone’s cup of tea.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Narcotic Commentary on America before 9/11

I recommend this book for the millenial questioning the world we are inheriting and the priorities we place on the identities we think we are conveying through dissociative social media.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Good listen

This was a good one. Great narration. Interesting story and characters. Worth a listen. Highly enjoyable.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • MB
  • 2022-03-10

Helped me feel better about my life.

Whenever I read (listen) to a book about someone more dysfunctional than me, it is so reassuring.

Honestly I just loved this book. Just the laughs, scandals, and shocks kept me going. And who hasn't wanted to medicate themselves into hibernation?? Especially in our current climate.

I always love listening to Julia Whelan, and she does a great job of portraying this b*tchy, selfish character.

I have recommended this book to other, and have listened to it more than once. 5 stars across the board!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

listened in a single day

I blinked and finished this in a single sitting. Moshfegh brought her signature crude and darkly funny tone to this outrageous story which started out as satire then deviated from what I was anticipating.

Our nameless narrator wants to enter a year of hibernation in hopes of erasing herself and reawakening a new person. To achieve this, she consumes every prescription drug she can get her hands on and spends her few waking moments sat in-front of her VCR or in a blacked-out haze. As our narrator dips in and out of reality, the world around her moves forward towards one of the darkest events in New York’s history. The narrator’s own traumatic past has been eating away at her bit by bit, acting as the catalyst for this hibernation experiment which creates a character that is at their most damaged and disillusioned.

I wanna start by saying I loved how Moshfegh got me to feel for the narrator while highlighting that her nihilistic approach is only made possible by her status. This is the Moshfegh hallmark: writing anti-heroes that find humour in dark depravity but still make you feel a sense of shared humanity.

The narrator is aware that her position in society is what affords her this chance to run away from her trauma instead of dealing with it head on. She doesn’t worry about money while living in New York, collects unemployment despite not needing it, has access to psychiatric help (albeit terrible help, Dr. Tuttle is a piece of work), all the while aligning with the thin white blonde beauty standard of the early 2000s. Despite the narrator’s nihilism and desire to disengage completely, the world continues to embrace her with open arms, labelling her year of rest and relaxing an elaborate performance piece.

The final page has me conflicted. I'd hoped to see a different ending, one that would force the narrator to engage with the systems that afforded her a rebirth. All I can come to is this idea that everyone, regardless of societal echelon or character flaws, deserves to move through this world awake and alive.

edit 11/01/2022: im now feeling like the ending has this nice cyclical aspect to it, and it points to this ideas that you can't run from grief and pain. I was originally looking at this story purely as satire, but I don't think that fits with the ending Moshfegh decided to go with. I'll be thinking about this book for a while.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Strange but good

There was not a lot of plot, but an interesting view of existentialism. Not life changing but a fun read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Original!

The characters were very well developed and though it was somewhat repetitive at times I found it uplifting and interesting.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!