not my cup of tea

This had a slow start, a faster-paced middle, and a slower end. I unfortunately must say I was bored for most of it. Then again, this is the first literary fiction novel I've read in a while, and they don't move as quickly as most of the fantasy books I'm used to. I can, however, appreciate a book or movie where nothing really happens. But only if in the act of nothing happening, there's some internal character development or growth going on. In which case, something is happening, on a subtle, satisfying level for the reader or viewer. Some readers may have been able to find growth in the main character of this novel, some semblance of a character arc or a sense that she learned from her oftentimes harmful and destructive decisions. But I just didn't. There are certainly moments where it seems like, in her quest to sleep for long enough to wake up a new, rejuvenated person (with the help of heavy doses of assorted medication), the narrator realizes not everything's going completely according to plan. For example, her sporadic realizations that she's moved around and purchased things while asleep or in between states of sleep and consciousness. No one wants to realize they maxed out their credit card while sleep walking. But we see her continue to self-medicate, trying even harder to stock up on enough to really knock out. The most movement seemed to come in the middle of the book when she physically visits Reva's, her one friend's, hometown for her mother's funeral. There was loads of symbolism and irony, but I was just sad. The narrator resists very clear trauma she has from her own parents' deaths and less than healthy parent-child dynamics. It got frustrating for me to see a character capable of a lot of growth and self-awareness be (what I interpreted) willfully blind to the fact that she has undiagnosed trauma from her childhood. She ends up selling the house left to her in the wake of her parents' deaths, and if that was meant to be a symbol of her finally letting them go, it didn't feel satisfying enough. She didn't really solve any of her deeper-rooted problems in the process. Sleep, though fantastic, just can't fix everything about current unhappiness or lack of fulfillment, and readers know this to be some sort of fact when they pick up the book. But the execution of the concept fell short for me, and I don't have much more to say on it other than that. So I'll leave it at that.



One of my favorite quotes from My Year of Rest and Relaxation:

"I thought life would be more tolerable if my brain were slower to condemn the world around me."

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