![]() ![]() “Sad Girl Summer” reading lists feature books about disaffected twentysomethings for those who, like the Sad Girl character, can’t get out of bed despite the warm weather.īut the literary romanticization of this kind of woman isn’t new, even if social media has made it easier to imitate. BookTok creators showcase a stack of Sad Girl books alongside coquettish, aesthetic symbols like lip gloss, pearls, and heart-shaped sunglasses while a Lana Del Rey or Mitski song plays in the background. Most recently, this archetype has been pathologized on BookTok, a subcommunity of booklovers on TikTok. Nothing can cut through the disaffection, the constant desire not to exist. She mostly, if not only, dates unavailable men. She’s either unemployed and broke or working a meaningless job that she’ll lose before the third act. A young white woman, unable to confront the grief, trauma, and/or mental illness that numbs her (think: Esther in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar), makes a radical - albeit self-destructive - change (think: the unnamed narrator of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation putting herself to sleep for a year using prescription drugs). It puts things into perspective and has helped me to embrace the more difficult parts of this uncertain era.During the summer of 2020, a certain kind of literary heroine regained popularity on social media. If you’re curious about the journey of another twenty-something and want an escape from your own, I recommend this book. Several weeks after I’ve finished this book, I’m still trying to make sense of the profound ending. We know it’s happening soon, but we have no idea how it’ll affect our protagonist. Lastly, the fact that the entire timeline is a slow build up to 9/11 had me sitting on the edge of my seat. Though I didn’t know her name, I felt the protagonist to be almost an extension of myself I felt her pain, experienced her triumphs, and wished her nothing but the peace she was seeking. In the end, though, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” was a page turner. Secondly, the part of the book in which she begins to experience positive change is quite brief, which I felt was unsatisfying. I think that this could be a dangerous message for some people, so anyone considering reading this novel should keep that in mind. I wouldn’t say this is a book that romanticizes drug abuse, but I think it certainly walks a fine line. However, this book does leave me with a few qualms. And sometimes, we need isolation and self-reflection more than the empty comfort that others provide, a lesson I’ve had to come to terms with recently. However, that’s what makes both of these books so satisfying-the brutal honesty. ![]() This is also combined with the fact that both narrators have a tendency to be insufferable. This book, in my humble opinion, is a modern day “Catcher in the Rye.” In both books, we experience the suffocation of family trauma, the frustration of existing around a bunch of two-faced “phonies,” and the anguish of mental illness. Worst of all, though, she can’t see the beauty in things anymore. ![]() Alas, each time she wakes up from her drug-induced blackout, she is still in love with a dirty older banker named Trevor who treats her like garbage and is still bombarded by her “best friend” Reva, a Long Island native who both loves and envies her. She walks us through the motions of growing dissatisfied with life as well as the reality of her addiction to a cocktail of psychotropic drugs that she uses to sleep her days away, all in an attempt to rebirth herself. We follow an unnamed narrator, a young, rich, and beautiful Columbia graduate who is living off her dead parents’ inheritance. “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh is a 2018 novel that takes readers to New York City before 9/11. A book about a woman living all alone reviewed by a woman living all alone By: Nina Afremov ![]()
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