asterixmj's reviews
12 reviews

I really do not like the implications this book is making, like at all. I'm not sure if that's just how I'm reading it all, but to me, the book is sort of implying that the protagonist, who's nameless (which tbh feels like an on the nose reference to The Stranger, tho I haven't seen anything from the author about referencing that book or anything; I'll go back to this point in a bit), got better and started somewhat appreciating things only after she had this year of isolating herself and making herself feel absolutely nothing. Only after she fully disconnected herself from the world did she start to somewhat appreciate it, and that makes no fucking sense. To me at least. I have very strong sentiments against nihilism, and that whole "oh nothing really matters its all so absurd and meaningless anyways" kind of rethoric, to me it's simply a stupid way to look at the world and a quick ass way to turn you into a depressed, cruel person. The meanest, most questionable people I've met all subscribe to that rethoric, they were all people who were outright mean and did so many questionable things, and when asked about any regrets or conscience about their actions, they'd just answer "we're all gonna die anyways, aren't we?" and i hate that, more than anything in this world. If you know ANYTHING about human beings you'd know we're social beings, even the most introverted of people need someone around, need company. Isolating yourself from everyone? Yeah, you're just stripping yourself from the things that MAKE YOU human. I was ranting about this book once and I remember saying something like, the worst thing that happened to this woman was being human, she sees being human as this curse that she's bound to, she sees her grief as a curse, as something to be rid of, when that's just so not how you deal with these types of things. Emotions, as painful as they may be, are part of what makes us human, and outright rejecting them and trying to push them away, trying to pretend they don't exist by sleeping them away, is NOT how you deal with them. If an emotion is too painful, too much to deal with, you wanna learn how to manage the pain, how to reconcile with the emotion itself and be in a conversation with the emotion, not simply push it away and expect life to be beautiful after you've done so.

I was talking to a friend who loves this book, and she told me that what she loves about this book is the unapologetic portrayal of depression, and that it gave her a sense of safety in that she doesn't feel she HAS to be the best of people when she's depressed, that reading about this absolute asshole of a person made her realise she doesn't owe anyone anything, doesn't owe anyone being a perfect victim, in her depression. I disagree with her to an extent. I can appreciate that this book offers an unapologetic portrayal of depression (and narcissism, but that's another conversation entirely) that would normally never be portrayed, because it's true, people don't usually write books about what happens when assholes are depressed and reading about any perspective is always a good way to understand other people. I also agree that people don't owe anyone a "perfect victim" attitude; people who are depressed, are in a process of grief, or just genuinely aren't having the best of times in their lives, don't owe anyone perfection and they get to make mistakes and be angry and be mean, cus after all they're human beings who are dealing with complicated shit and are bound to make mistakes. What I don't like is what people are taking out of the book BECAUSE of the implications the ending of the book makes.

We do owe each other things. Not perfection, but we do owe each other. We owe each other kindness, we owe each other respect, we owe each other generousness. We owe each other the ability to make mistakes AND the ability to recognise those mistakes and apologise when appropriate. We owe each other patience when someone is going through a difficult time in their lives, and we owe each other accountability and gratefulness when we're the ones going through hard times and people are sticking to our side. This book is saying we don't. Reva, the only character with any fucking braincells that are willing to go through any human emotions at all, is never given the grace that our MC is, and the moment that she is given that grace? At the end, quite literally when she dies, after the MC has pratically stopped talking to her. That's not how human empathy works. Your empathy is like a muscle. If you distance yourself from people, isolate yourself, stop talking to anyone and make a cocoon out of your home, your empathy will loose strength and the connections you make with people will be weaker, you won't give them the same slack or grace you'd give them when surrounding yourself with humanity. That whole "Reva is beautiful" shit? Would be more likely to happen after Reva and our MC hang out a lot than after they've stopped talking.

Have you never ended up being friends with someone you used to hate? Have you never ended up appreciating things about someone you thought were annoying as fuck? Have you never gotten soft on someone after seeing how utterly human they are, just like you? Embracing your humanity (and that of others) is what makes life beautiful to live, NOT the other way around. Which is what this book is trying to imply. You know what I think would happen to the MC? After the ending, sometime in the future? I think she'd crash. She'd have a massive mental breakdown where all her repressed emotions catch up to her, and either she embraces them and learns to live with them, learns to embrace her humanity, or she'd have another "year of rest and relaxation". This "method" of hers is, realistically, the worst way someone can deal with their grief and their pain. And worst of all its not even realistic, cus let's be fucking real w each other NO ONE has enough money to sustain themselves through a "year of rest and relaxation" like this mf does. You wanna know why rich people get depressed? Because they try so hard to distance themselves from the rest of the world that they strip themselves of their humanity in the process. Think you're better than 99.9% of the world? Think you're different than them? The only way to make yourself different from literally ALL of humanity is to strip your humanity away. Which is what rich people do. They get rid of their empathy, their kindness, and their generosity, and THAT is what makes rich people depressed. They're making themselves miserable in an attempt to distance themselves from the rest of the world. It's honestly embarrassing. And y'know what? That's exactly what this woman is doing.

I HATE to see this book on Instagram posts of "thought daughter bookshelf" or any posts that imply that if you read this book, enjoy it and analyse it or whatever, you know something the rest of us don't, you're more intellectual than the rest of us. What's so intellectual about dehumanising yourself? What's so secret and fun and elite about denying yourself the beautiful thing that are emotions? I learnt absolutely nothing from this book. Literally nothing. If anything, I learnt to be wary of people who take the message of this book to heart, because it's do not want to be close to people who don't even give themselves the privilege of feeling human just to make themselves feel better than the rest of us. How desperate do you have to be, to make yourself feel better, superior, than the average person, that you'd go so far as to dehumanise yourself to do so?

I draw comparison with the book The Stranger cus tbf, they are quite similar. Both the protagonists don't have a name, both books have this topic of absurdism and somewhat nihilism. But there's a very, VERY big difference between the two and that is that The Stranger knows this kinda life is bullshit and not worth living. In The Stranger, the character by himself (as in, he's not actively trying to make this his situation) does not feel anything at all, can't bring himself to care about anything, and once the consequences of not caring about anything catch up to him, it's already too late. The Stranger looks at all the "oh life is meaningless we're all gonna die anyways" and says yeah no that's absolute fucking bs, this is what happens when you subscribe to that kinda rethoric. And the guy is miserable when all the consequences of "not caring" catch up to him, he's desperate for ANY human connection, ANY emotions. In My Year of Rest and Relaxation... that does not happen. The MC is actively making herself apathetic, actively ridding herself of any and all human emotions she could possibly feel and only ever surviving instead of living, and by the end of it she's... happy? She appreciates life? She sees beauty in things? I call absolute fucking bs on that. My Year of Rest and Relaxation is implying that by doing the same thing the MC does you'll get to a point of bliss, that by isolating yourself life will eventually be worth living and you'll be a better person and you'll get all these epiphanies and whatever tf not. The Stranger says the truth, which is, if you try to do the same shit as the MC, you'll be fucking miserable as shit. So. Yeah. I call bullshit on this book, but at least I can appreciate the accurate portrayal of how much of an asshole rich people distancing themselves from humanity can be. Just adding up more reasons to eat the rich!

I honestly think this is a very, very good book, and it got me thinking about my own culture before colonisation a lot. Its a curious thing, how Achebe depicts Christianity when not tied directly with colonialism, and I think you can tell that he grew up Christian. He doesn't describe the clan as a purely good clan, romanticising what once was before the arrival of the English, but instead he simply describes the Igbo culture from a neutral, outsider's perspectives. I would've loved to see more from Nwoye's perspective of things; it's really interesting to me how his struggles with his father reflected his struggles with the clan at large and let to him running away from them. Okonkwo is the personification of Umofia, I feel. When Okonkwo is great and strong (but stubborn, violent, and intimidating) so is Umofia, and when Okonkwo is weak, emancipated, and his previous strength turns into bash actions that lead nowhere, Umofia is about the same. His death makes a lot of sense to me; he's unable to cope with the death of his clan, with the death of "manliness" as he so calls it, I don't think its so much a stubbornness towards change, though that is definitely a factor, but more so an overwhelming grief of what he believes the White Man destroyed for him, although he, and by extent Umofia, by himself had shaky foundations that allowed the White Man to easily dismantle the community. A very good look to understand pre colonial Nigeria and the complexities that went into their colonisation

I think this is one of those books where i regret not knowing the language in which it was originally written. All the works from japanese authors that I have read (which, I must admit, are not many, but still) have this particular style to them that I can't quite put my finger on, and of course Dazai's book here isn't an exception. I was under the impression that this book would be more disturbing than "No longer human", a book I haven't read but have been warned about thanks to my far from cheerful background. But i don't find where that 'disturbance' lies in. This book is about a changing society, and the ones most affected by it: the aristocracy. As a raging anti-capitalist (lol) I find absolutely no remorse in the aristocracy loosing the money delivered to them on a silver platter through the explotation of others; however there is another way this book explores aristocracy, or rather, the concept of nobility and that of the heart. What makes a person truly noble, far beyond anything anyone from this so called aristocracy could fathom to be. I'd be lying if i said i fully understood the purposes of this book, but of course i don't, I'm not Osamu Dazai, and I don't know him. What I take from this book is that one must, if nothing else, attempt to be noble, with the knowledge that to be noble is to be kind and look at the world with hope in one's heart; if not noble then one must live for two reasons: love and revolution. I am aware that is probably not the message the book was trying to communicate but it is the one I'm deriving from it, and whether it denotes my lack of media literacy or quite the opposite, will be up to you

I've been reading some reviews on this book and i think there's a lil something that people are criminally misunderstanding about this book (or maybe they aren't, and my interpretation of the book is as weird as any other, who knows?), and that is that you're supposed to loathe the way that Meursault is living his life, you're supposed to close the cover on the book and be like 'that is NOT how I want to live my life' and continue on, making a conscious effort to be as far removed from Meursaults life as you can be.
Meursaults life is a result of completely giving up your soul in the name of absurdism (or nihilism, or existentialism, I really can't remember which it is and can't be bothered at the moment to look it up) and the consequences of doing so. I'd recommend listening to Mitski's 'The Deal' from her latest album, and think of Meursault as the individual that would result from such an encounter. Meursault is criminally under-creative, there's nothing in his life that goes beyond sensual and physical sensations, his life has no meaning other than eating, having sex with Maria, sleeping, surviving, really. Meursault is not living, he's merely surviving, he has no opinion on anything at all, he chronically just does not care about anything, 'cus that's the absurdity of it all, isn't it?', 'what worth is it giving life any value when it is all so absurd?', and the book slaps you in the face saying 'you're purposefully making your life miserable and one devoid of any meaning at all, if your sole goal in this life is to survive, you're doing life itself a massive disservice'. Be creative, find a lil meaning in the stupid things of life. It's all absurd and in the grand scheme of things we're all worthless, epehemeral dots of life that'll have no impact in the fate of the universe, but what about the small scheme of things? What about your daily life? What about the life of the cat across the street? Of your neighbours? Of your colleagues, family, friends? We can give life a meaning, regardless of how small that meaning may be, so stop sabotaging your own life and take this book as a call to start enjoying the little things in life that Meursault would never have been able to enjoy.
Be a foil to Meursault, and maybe life will seem just a little bit more bearable :)