I really enjoyed reading and finishing this book today. So dark and shallow to start, but turns deep in its own time and the writing is addictive, I couldn't put it down. Rich smart emotionally lost gallery girl in NYC in the 1990s decides to heal herself with a year of drugs. Surprised me, highly recommend.

This book has no real plot and I absolutely could not stand the main character/narrator, but nevertheless I found it strangely compelling and could not put it down. It reminded me a little of Claire-Louise Bennett's brilliant "Pond" and I know exactly which of my customers I am going to recommend it to.

What a bold, original, uncompromising writer Moshfegh is! If I fell in love with her work with Eileen, then this book has sealed my adoration.

On the surface, this is a kind of non-story: ‘I had started “hibernating” as best I could in mid-June of 2000. I was twenty-four years old.’ The unnamed narrator self-medicates with the help of a crazy-mad psychiatrist (‘there was no shortage of psychiatrists in New York City, but finding one as irresponsible and weird as Dr Tuttle would be a challenge’) in order to sleep her way through life – but actually, there’s a strange but compelling method behind her madness: ‘it was the opposite of suicide. My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life.’

And what is it that needs saving? The narrator is model-beautiful, thin, bright (she has a degree from Columbia), has a job in an art gallery and inherited money... but she senses a spiritual hollowness in both herself and wider American (Western?) culture – and her existential quest is to re-set herself, to find meaning beyond the superficial, the commercial/capitalist, the trite.

If this sounds grim and hard-work, trust me, it’s not. Part of Moshfegh’s genius is in finding a black humour in this story. The voice is immaculate, the story strangely gripping – but also layered enough to create characters we both laugh at and yet empathise with – witness the narrator’s ‘best friend’ who lives her life via the fictions of women’s glamour magazines.

And through it all, Moshfegh knows precisely where she wants to end up – with a stunning final image: ‘There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide-awake’. The full resonance of this will only be revealed once you read this wonderful, important, utterly contemporary book.