The Writing On The Wall

If you haven’t heard of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, it’s okay I didn’t either until my English teacher brought it up, and I would be lying if I didn’t judge it by its cover. However, the reviews and the remarks of how great of a ending it had along with how everyone who read it fell in love with it, I decided to give it a try and I was not disappointed, compared to the rest of the literature world Ottessa Moghfensen sets MYORR apart from anything else I’ve read yet bringing a uncanny sense of familiarity to my own world and that of everyone else’s as well. Unlike using words sparsely like Hemingway or being lyrical like Toni Morrison, Ottessa has found a way to narrate a book so loosely and free flowing, yet it is simmantanesouly pieced together so seamlessly and structured it is heavy hitting, and as free as it seems, it can make the most calmest scenes feel suffocating. And the bitter and cruel thoughts of despair and melancholy in between the lines feel like punch to the heart, which everyone feels except the narrator.  It seems as though the only ones meant to feel anything in this novel are those who read it, as though the style and wording has been geared towards the audience in order to bring out some sort of underlying and forgotten emotion that has been buried deep under by the misery of the lives we lead, it feels as though the author has found a way to make a parallel between our unnamed narrator and those reading, because everyone inside and outside of this novel is fading away from life as they lead on normalised mute existences.

Because of this I personally think Ottessa Moshfegh’s writing style is great and definitely refreshing (11 out of 10 would pick her books over Nathaniel Hawthorne’s anytime of the week) she has most definitely made her own name out in the modern American LIterature scene and made it clear she isn’t like any other author out there, because I mean come on, who would’ve ever thought to write a book about sleep! And then to slowly unravel it to reveal twists of longing and painful moments that the narrator can recall but not express. Don’t get me wrong her style isn’t completely flawless, because of her writing the narrator is presented to be disgustingly uncaring and has led me, and according to other reviews I’ve read, others to detest the narrator and other characters from time to time. However, oddly enough, even when I do hate certain actions and the thoughts that race through the narrators head and how cruel they sound, I don’t mind, it’s almost as though Moshfegh has found a way to normalize even the most morbid parts of the cruelest and daring areas of the human mind and its desires, which is even more reason to appreciate her writing.