Chapter 29 -The Book Club (Part Two)

I did promise I'd let you know about this month's book in my last week's blog. This month's book was My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. I first read about this book in Publisher's Weekly right before it was published in 2018. It was named as one of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times, the best book of the year by the Washington Post, NPR, and others. It has received a 4 out of 5 stars with over 20,000 reviews on Amazon (no author has that many friends!). It received a rating of 3.64 out of 5 stars with over 108,000 reviews on Storygraph, and Goodreads gives it a 3.61 with over 530,000 ratings. Kim, who facilitated the discussion read a review she pulled off the internet in which the author believed that the book was probably to be found on most readers' bed side tables. So we all figured, it should be good - right?

I'm not sure if it was the book or just that everyone was busy with their lives but there were just three of us last night for our discussion. So being the devout book clubbers we are, we dissected the book from start to finish. We all decided that we didn't like it, wouldn't recommend it, and probably would not read the author again. You would think that the discussion based on the above opinions would have lasted maybe a half hour. But no, we actually did a significant deep dive into the book themes including drugs, emotional vacancy, dark humor (we found none dark or otherwise), gratuitous sex, self-absorption, social classes, environment, and whether this book might appeal to a different generation of readers than we are. While there were only three of us talking about it, this morning I heard from a few more members who also said they didn't like the book.

To be fair, our book club group is between the ages of late thirties to about seventy-five although the core group of 10 averages in the 40 to 70 year range. So maybe a younger group (20's or 30's perhaps) might have affiliated with the story more. For the three of us we just wanted the protagonist to pull up her socks and move on. We really wished more people had shown up so we could get different viewpoints.

So for My Year of Rest and Relaxation although your book club may not like the book, it did engender a lot of discussion. So while, the discussion part is what we really like about book club, for us it seemed like a waste of reading time. Reader, be forewarned and enter at your own risk!

If you have any interest in joining our great little book club group and live in the Myrtle Beach or surrounding areas you can find us here - https://bookclubs.com/myrtle-beach-book-club-2/meetings

And, if you have read this book please let me know if you liked it or didn't and why. Thanks!