My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Moshfegh has a keen sense of everyday absurdities, a deadpan delivery, and such a well-honed sense of irony that the narrator's predicament never feels tragic; this may be the finest existential novel not written by a French author. . . . A nervy modern-day rebellion tale that isn't afraid to get dark or find humor in the darkness. - Kirkus, starred review Electrifying. . . Moshfegh's narrator's final gesture, transforming herself into a piece of half-living art, echoes the odd and combative passivity of Herman Melville's Bartleby, a scrivener who suddenly, inexplicably, refuses to perform his duties. . . . In a country that celebrates doers, such a preference is grotesque, an inversion of the American ideal of prospering through hard work. But it also serves as a reminder that there is something to life outside the economic exchange of time for money and money for goods, even if that unnamed thing is obscure and perplexing and just a bit monstrous--particularly as a woman. Literature may not have the all the answers, but it can show us the power and allure of saying no. - Vanity Fair