Arshi Ibsan Radifah

You know that feeling when you crack open a new book and you’re convinced that this is the knight in all its paperback shining armour that will save you from your reading slump? Yeah.

All’s Well circles one maddening question: what does pain need to look like before someone finally believes you? And how do you stop before it gets too discomfortable?

Where Babitz is like the intimidating older sister you could only listen to in an obsessed quiet, Ephron feels more like a friend translating my internal monologue into the perfect words.

I was born too late for CBGB’s, too offline for MySpace and too far away from dive bars. I came to all of it two entire decades late so The Strokes wasn’t exactly the soundtrack to my reckless twenties but a band I happened to stumble into during a mid-pandemic spiral.

Now, two decades later, the question lingers: Did "Guts" really cause waves of fainting spells, or did the legend grow legs of its own?

Happy Hour greeted me like a warm hug. This is definitely one of the sweetest books I’ve read this year, and possibly one of the sweetest books I will ever read.

The best part of this book is perhaps the fact that all the weird, bonkers cultish stuff just happens with no rhyme or reason to it.

A review of Ottessa Moshfegh's 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation' (Penguin Press, 2023)