My Year of Rest and Relaxation: Reva

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My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh was a lot to unpack.

What was MYORAR really about? A lot of things: the material world, privilege, art, psychiatry, escape, being lost and alone in the world, infidelity, numbness, indifference. But what stood out the most to me was our main character’s relationship with Reva, her supposed best friend.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation synopsis

The book follows a dead-inside 20-something as she escapes reality by sleeping through the year. She’s pretty – on her worst days her looks are still enviable, smart and cultured, financially taken care of, but she recently lost her parents (and never really felt their presence in her life to begin with), has only one friend and her on/off boyfriend is too preoccupied and downright mean. It’s no wonder she feels continuous sleep is her only option, an option she achieves using various pill and drug combinations.

*This analysis is intended for those who have read the book (on Amazon here). It may contain spoilers.*

The main character and Reva’s relationship

To describe the main character and Reva’s relationship in one word it would be: Ow. Both our main character and Reva aren’t very likeable, though Reva is more so than our main character. (That’s a good thing though, likeable characters are flat out boring.) Their friendship far from flows. Reva is constantly assessing the main character, nudging her at least somewhat out of concern, juggling jealousy and real affection for her. Our main character on the other hand is bothered and annoyed by Reva’s presence in her life. At the same time, she benefits from it.

“I loved Reva, but I didn’t like her anymore,” she describes. In her head she places her far, far away, unflinchingly analyzing her motives and neediness throughout their time together. It seems our main character takes pride in her distance. She treats her carelessly, hoping that one day Reva will have enough and leave her alone.

Rereading the book, it reminds me of a much lighter version of Lapvona (on Amazon here), Ottessa’s more recent book where she took full liberty to put every negative emotion one might have about another on full strength and omit any positives.

To call it a toxic friendship would be too neat a title, too easy a category. Despite what the main character says, the two actually do have a lot in common aside from their shared history. They’re both only children, with parents that are dead or dying, in obsessive relationships with men that don’t have time for them and have bleak inner worlds. Our main character doesn’t want to admit it, but she is attached to Reva in some way. They are attached in their negativity. Even though she’s hoping Reva will just stop calling, stop showing up at her door and just forget about her one day, it’s hard to trust our narrator completely. At one point she admits to herself she’d feel jealous if Reva had another friend she clung onto.

Come to think of it, all our main character’s relationships are characterized by inequality. There’s the on/off boyfriend that puts her last every time, the psychiatrist she’s manipulating, her parents that saw right past her, the girls in school that looked up to her for outward appearance. It seems this is is the only way she knows how to be in a relationship: distant and removed. And it’s brought out the most in her relationship with Reva.

To me, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (see more books like it on the blog here) was about their friendship at the core. Were we meant to wonder if deep down she cared more for Reva than she let on? That somewhere underneath her cutting analysis and all too causal tolerance of her, she appreciated and loved her? And that this was just her way of connecting? Especially after the ending I wonder…