Sleepless in Manhatten

I arrived at Claire's and she handed me 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation' by Ottessa Moshfegh. I had bought her for her birthday and she was sure I would enjoy it. And then I realised how I had come across 'Eileen', because I had bought this, sent it to Claire, and then just search in the library for anything else she had written. 

A privileged young woman seems to have so many (unspecified) 'issues' that she decides to sedate herself for a year in the hope of resetting her brain. She finds an amenable doctor, to whom she describes a variety of sleep issues, and they prescribe a steady stream of medication that keeps her insensible. She allows herself to wake up every few days to eat and clean herself. The book became a bit of an endless list drug doses and self pity and I am not sure that I found myself caring about her much. This was how she functioned before deciding to retire from normal life:

"At work, I took hour-long naps in the supply closet under the stairs during my lunch breaks. 'Napping' is such a childish word, but that was what I was doing. The tonality of my night sleep was more variable, generally unpredictable, but every time I lay down in that supply closet I went straight into black emptiness, an infinite space of nothingness. I was neither scared nor elated in that space. I had no visions. I had no ideas. If I had a distinct thought, I would hear it, and the sound of it would echo and echo until it got absorbed by the darkness and disappeared. There was no response necessary. No inane conversation withy myself. It was peaceful. A vent in the closet released a steady flow of fresh air that picked up the scent of laundry from the hotel next door. There was no work to do, and nothing I had to counteract or compensate for because there was nothing at all, period. and yet I was aware of the nothingness. I was awake in the sleep, somehow. I felt good. Almost happy." (p.39-40)

At the utter other end of the spectrum we have 'The Library of Heartbeats' by Laura Imai Messina. In it Shuichi, who is starting to clear out his childhood home, finds himself drawn into a friendship with Kenta, a neighbouring child and a young woman, Sakaya, and their growing bond helps him grieve his mother, his childhood and his young son who drowned a couple of years previously. These three people tiptoe around each other but eventually come to trust and care for each other, and in return you care for them. Shuichi struggles with his loss and loneliness but together they find connection and take a visit to the library of heartbeats (which is a real thing).

This little moment when he makes a snack for Kenta:

"'If you're going to do something, you have to do it properly.'

The echo of those words, uttered with the exact intonation of his mother, filled the kitchen, then fell, like a glass of water slipped from a hand." (p.61)

And later thinking about incidents from his childhood that his mother tried to pretend had not happened:

"Shuichi thought about it while he looked in the fridge. For example, the trip to Nagano when he was ten, shredded memories that had been visiting him in his dreams recently: the snow three metres high that made every road into a bastion; the red-faced monkeys floating in the hot springs; the oyaki dumplings that were so delicious he insisted on having them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But in Nagano he also rode a horse and was maybe thrown off: he landed on his back and his mother screamed - he physically remembered the sound. And if, as a child, Shuichi ever asked about Nagano, his mother would change the subject so determinedly that at a certain point he started to wonder if any of it was real: the compact walls of snow, the monkeys, the spring rolls filled with adzuki beans, the horse's tense body as it suddenly arched its back." (p.110-11)

I found 'The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint Exupery on a random bookcase in the spare room at mum and dad's. I had never read it to my children. Bemused as to what all the fuss is about 😕.

Stay safe. Be kind.