My Year of Rest and Relaxation

　　她應該感到快樂的，不是嗎？畢竟沒有什麼不快樂的理由——她年輕貌美，身材纖細，哥大畢業高材生，在時髦畫廊做著輕鬆工作。更何況，她父母留下的遺產足以支付曼哈頓上東城公寓的昂貴租金，以及生活中所有開銷。但她心裡空洞——她知道這不只是因為父母的死，不只因為她那在華爾街工作的男友是個爛人，也不是因為她和唯一的朋友瑞娃那不知道算不算友情的友情。身在西元兩千年、富足而充滿可能性的紐約，她這人到底出了什麼問題？
 
　　於是她翻開電話簿，找到了開藥像不用錢的精神科醫師，彷彿藥物可以治好人和這個世界的疏離。其中一顆藥 Infermiterol 吃了之後可以昏睡三天，她決定利用這個藥物讓自己進入冬眠狀態，希望自己醒來已是一個全新的人，身處一個全新的世界。
 
　　文學新星奥戴莎．莫思斐（Ottessa Moshfegh）繼曼布克入圍小說 Eileen 及短篇集 Homesick for Another World 後，再度交出好評佳作；藉著這名現代食蓮者、沒有名字的女主角的冬眠實驗，描寫了人和自己、和世界的離異，以及存在的真正意義。
 
　　Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
 
　　My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.