Is alienation a threat to our personal wellbeing or its safeguard? In My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh, this week's Book of the Week, a young woman, fed up with her vapid and privileged life, decides to spend a year in narcotic hibernation, supervised by a very unsafe psychiatrist. 
"Matter of fact, full of bravado yet always wryly observational. One of the pleasures of reading Moshfegh is her relentless savagery." - The Guardian
>> Read an excerpt. 
>> Another excerpt (with photos!).
>> "She believes that sleep will cleanse her." 
>> "Easily the most interesting contemporary American writer on the subject of being alive when being alive feels terrible."
>> "Am I sick of talking about it?"
>> Where did the idea come from? 
>> "I say too much."
>> "I wish I could have been a singer."
>> What's in Moshfegh's fridge? 
>> Moshfegh's Eileen was short-listed for the Booker Prize. 
>> By the book. 
>> Buy the book. 
>> The provenance of the painting on the cover. 
>> Moshfegh at VOLUME.