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Showing posts with the label Ottessa Moshfegh

"My Year of Rest and Relaxation"

People have been tweeting the highlights of "Fear," by Woodward. Fair enough. But I feel that Ottessa Moshfegh's new novel deserves similar attention. -Yes, the protagonist describes a twisted love. Her lazy sometimes-boyfriend accuses her of being a prude because she won't administer oral services to him while he is on the toilet. To prove she is in fact not a prude, she offers to have him penetrate an oft-overlooked orifice. He tries, and stops, claiming that there is fecal matter all over his member, and the protagonist knows this is false, because "he didn't even get inside there." -Are you hooked? The entirety of the first one hundred pages--at least--is like this. -The narrator, having lost both of her (checked-out) parents, decides to sleep for a year. She will have a "year of rest and relaxation," and maybe when she wakes up she will stop feeling disgusted by everything. Her mother was clinically depressed and would have her sleep...