Unlikeable narrators are hard to get right. They need to be "awful" enough for the reason not to start coddling and adoring them, but still likeable enough that one is motivated to stick through an entire story told from their point of view. It's important to understand why these characters are unlikeable, be it grief, trauma, self-hatred, nurture, nature... the list goes on. Ottessa Moshfegh managed to craft a very believable and tragic narrator who you want to hate and comfort at the same time. You're unsure whether the character is just a terrible person, or if her character is a product of the years she spent drifting through life in grief, unguided and far away from the shores she seeks.

It's a book that's easy to read once you stop googling every single pill name mentioned (and stop fretting whether the protagonist will get her stomach pumped once every two weeks or not), because the author just crafts such realistic characters, that they carry the plot along effortlessly. I didn't mind the pace the story picked up towards the end (though I would have liked to have known more about some of the things that that took place off-camera), as it tied into the goal of the story: exploring what this year of rest and relaxation could look like.