My Year of Rest and Relaxation Themes

While the title of My Year of Rest and Relaxation brings to mind themes of wellness and self-care, in fact, the “rest and relaxation”—the self-imposed “hibernation”—on which the novel’s unnamed narrator embarks actually resembles a journey toward self-destruction. Beginning in June of 2000, the narrator decides that she will sleep, as much as is physically possible, for one year. In so doing, she hopes to emerge with an improved sense of self and a renewed…

My Year of Rest and Relaxation follows its unnamed narrator’s year-long hibernation project, during which she exists in a state of drug-induced sedation and rarely leaves her Manhattan apartment. The only people she associates with during this time are Dr. Tuttle, the ethically dubious psychiatrist she enlists to supply her with the drugs she requires to stay asleep, and her friend Reva, whose company she mostly hates. Even before she began…

Throughout My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the novel’s unnamed narrator denies that she is mourning her mother and father, who died when she was in college. Yet it’s obvious to readers that she continues to experience feelings of guilt and grief in the wake of her loss. On top of this, she struggles with unresolved feelings of anger and resentment at their failure to provide her with the unconditional love and stability…