My Year of Rest and Relaxation

I really didn't think this was going to be for me. The unnamed narrator is an unlikeable, slightly repulsive character that you find yourself caring for anyway amidst a depressive episode (depressive existence?) in which she is in a kind of denial — she lies to herself about why she wants to sleep for a year, lies to her only friend, lies to her quack psychiatrist to get more and stronger drugs, is only mildly concerned that she can't always reconstruct what happened during frequent drug-induced blackouts (but doesn't stop taking the offending drug, obviously, just comes up with weirder and weirder ways of trying to prevent herself from doing stuff).

This book was oddly, comfortably numbing. The first half was almost hypnotic in its language; the narrator doesn't care, and for a little while, you don't either. It was oddly pleasant to read, and then it was jarring when she couldn't sleep, the sheer volume of pills consumed trying to achieve that bliss of unconsciousness. But it was also painful to see how she didn't — or maybe couldn't is the better word — care about the few people around her, especially the friend who needed her during a devastating time.

My husband asked me what I was reading and what it was about, and when I didn't want to tell him because he would start worrying about me, he asked if he should be worried. We lost our daughter in August; she was stillborn at 24 weeks. My counselor says that depression is one of the stages of grief, but it doesn't feel like the same kind of depression as what was depicted here. For the narrator it was such a short jump from “I want to sleep” to “let's see if it's worth waking up”; I still want to wake up, even if being awake is exhausting.

I don't know if this was the best headspace in which to read this book, but I know I wouldn't have picked it up had I been in my normal, happy, overly optimistic headspace. And I did enjoy reading it even if it wasn't an especially happy or optimistic experience. It was comfortable for right now.