Deranged, Dissociated, and Loving It: My Year of Rest and Relaxation and the Rise of Unhinged Women Literature

This article explores the current (2018–present) rise in popularity of “unhinged women” literature, and the subsequent reception of this phenomenon online. Unhinged women literature refers to a genre of contemporary fiction that centers on white, financially secure, and conventionally attractive women who revel in the abject. Protagonists harbor distrustful and negative attitudes towards therapy, self-help, and feminist discourses, and engage in damaging activities with a level of self-awareness that does not lead them to stop what they are doing. Unhinged women often exist in a dissociated state, and their only confidante tends to be the implied reader of the text. A consideration of the reception of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) demonstrates the emergence and popularity of this genre and how, under neoliberal postfeminism, unhinged women literature serves as a rare site of identification and connection for young women.