My Year of Rest and Relaxation

The unnamed narrator is a misanthropic 26-year-old woman working at an upscale art gallery in Manhattan. In June 2000, the narrator—wealthy, attractive, and Ivy-League-educated—begins a project wherein she tries to sleep as much as she can with the help of various pills. While she wants unconsciousness to eclipse her waking life, she insists these measures are the “opposite” of suicidal; in fact, she sees the project as life-affirming and hopes to emerge from her “hibernation” a new person. In her waking hours, the narrator likes to watch movies because they numb out reality. In contrast, she can’t handle television or news, since it’s too connected to the real world and pulls too much at her emotions. She rarely goes out, leaving her ritzy Upper East Side apartment only to go to work or to buy coffee and snacks at her local bodega.

The narrator’s best friend from college, Reva, who works as an assistant at an insurance brokerage firm, visits her frequently. Though she says she loves Reva, the narrator finds her irksome and describes her mostly with disdain, especially regarding the young woman’s emotional investment in things the narrator personally finds meaningless.