My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Throughout the novel, the narrator suffers from a loneliness so severe it drives her to risky coping methods. Though she lives a life of privilege—she is wealthy, beautiful, and Ivy League-educated—the narrator lives a profoundly isolated life. Paradoxically despite her loneliness, however, the narrator is loath to form relationships. A self-described misanthrope, she has no interest in connecting to the world around her. At 26, she has no family, no romantic partners, and only one friend, whom she finds insufferably annoying.

A cynical person at her core, the narrator views modern life standards—going to college, climbing the career ladder, finding love, and starting a family, etc.—as pointless. With no ambitions to strive toward or hobbies to take pleasure in, the narrator spends her waking hours being miserable, hating “everyone and everything” and wanting only to go back to sleep (17).

The narrator maintains that she was never truly loved by her parents, and this lack of familial tenderness and affection has a profoundly negative impact on her view of people and relationships. Asserting at one point that her family did not have “much warmth in our hearts” (49), the narrator carries this lovelessness from childhood into adulthood where she is now indifferent to genuine human connection; if her own parents did not have the capacity to love her, then perhaps no one will.