This was a POWERFUL story. The way the narrative was structured was brilliant. The unnamed narrator was someone I will never forget.

A book I will recommend to friends, particularly as an immersive summer read and for those who are compelled by unreliable narrators. This novel is dizzying in its structure, jumping around in time, which can be captivating to some, and off putting to others. I hung on with the unnamed narrator through her journey, excited to see the representation of a bisexual Palestinian narrator. The first part of the novel struggles through what feels like some stereotypes about bisexuality and mental illness. The character expresses envy at heterosexual norms, and works to place herself in a space and identity that feels comfortable for her. The amazing thing is that Arafat keeps you mesmerized by her writing, as the narrator deepens her understanding of self.

In a word: WOW

So, okay. Book review of YOU EXIST TOO MUCH is up on my blog. It's too long to fit here. Suffice to say that a 30-something bisexual Palestinian-American woman tells me my life in beautiful, painfully honest sentences. I read this book twice and that is (as y'all're aware) an increasingly rare occurrence for me, at my age and with my TBR approaching mid-four figures. The reason I decided that I needed a second trip through the book was simple: I was so completely shattered by the honest and vulnerable story Author Arafat tells, a story that could with only minor tweaks be my own, that I didn't trust my opinion-forming ability. I was too close, too in the moment, to feel remotely analytical.

I was powerfully moved by this read. I identified with this young woman's pathology and her ancestry, although I'm not ethnically Arab or Palestinian or anything else the US looks down on. I totally understand misgendering and omitting details about one's significant others. Being situationally out, being "reserved" (the polite self-lie for "closeted"), being unable to see past the mountain of unworthy feelings that we stand under, behind, below.

I want y'all to read it. Like, a lot.

Zaina Arafat gives us a compelling and beautifully-written own voice debut in You Exist Too Much that will linger with readers long after the book is finished. The vignettes weave an expansive and emotional story of what it's like for the narrator.
I love the unique perspective, in that there isn't much LGBTQIA Literary Fiction, and Arafat does not miss the opportunity the themes that arise from a Palestinian-American bisexual woman trying to find herself and reconcile who she is with the culture she was brought up with and find love and acceptance romantically, within her family, and from herself.
Many thanks to Catapult and NetGalley for the advance copy.

There’s a lot going on in this novel, it’s the story of a Palestinian-American girl who is gay. It’s the story of how she came to travel the world looking for her identity. She is stuck between cultures and religion. She knows that her duty is to get married, but she cannot do that and be true to herself. Her struggle with her sexual identity leads her to one-night stands, drugs, and alcohol. Its not a happy story, but there is hope at the end.

Mostly, I enjoyed this read. At times, I even felt as though I could see myself in the midst of the story. Some parts seem to drone on, but still a decent book.

2.5/5 Stars since it didn't hold my interest as much as I was expecting.

I want so badly to read You Exist Too Much but I just can't get invested in it right now. If I am able to at a later date, I will update my review and link info.

I must say that the writing if great, and the subject matter heavy

The background of the novel is a woman born to Palestinian parents, who were forced to relocate in 1967. They have family in Lebanon, West Bank, and Jordan, but live in America. Her parents had a volatile relationship and her mother has often treated her like competition or an inconvenience, telling her "You exist too much" when she responds emotionally, especially when she starts trying to come out to her. The refusal to understand her daughter as anything but straight is one backbone to the novel.

But this is not a family saga. It's more like a recovery novel. At the start of the novel, a relationship between the MC and her girlfriend Anna has just ended and it's definitely her fault. She's been sleeping with randos at the bar where she DJs and carrying on with a married professor while claiming to be monogamous; she decides to check in to a facility for addiction...love addiction. I was a bit surprised at this as the majority of the story, because the very first scene of the novel, where she gets in trouble for exposing her ankles in Bethlehem, made me think it would be a different type of story.

I was more interested in the parts about her mother, honestly, what her life started as and what happened in the war, the distributed nature of her family, the strangeness of her parents' marriage and how violence was the only form of attention - the author was making the connection between that upbringing and the MC's behavior but I think the piece that was missing is that I'm not sure the MC ever does. This makes it feel like the novel is a snapshot of the story but not the entire story, and I think that's okay, but somehow not as satisfying as I would have liked.

A bit of a deeper dive: Since finishing this book I have watched one 15-minute video that is part of Resmaa Menakem's free eCourse on Racialized Trauma and if you add that context and understanding to this novel - woah. The MC's tendency to make everything about her, to become hypersensitive and volatile, emotional, to "exist too much" - what if that is her only option of response to the racialized trauma her family has experienced in the last few generations (and of course before that but very centrally on her parents and grandparents in particular.) I don't know if Arafat intended this connection but it is an interesting one to think about.

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat is a coming-of-age tale about a Palestinian-American woman trying to navigate her family’s culture as well as her own sexual identity. She tells her story in first person and shares stories from her visits to her family in Jordan and Palestine. She has numerous relationships, sometimes reckless, while trying to figure out her own way in life as well as how to love in a healthy way.
Overall, this book is well written and I was pulled in for most of it. I felt for the narrator, even though at times I was cringing at her decisions. These poor decisions she made reminded me of some scary movies, when there is a killer on the loose and everyone yells at the screen for the main characters to run away. I wanted to shake the narrator (probably similar to how Renata felt) and tell her she was making a terrible decision.
Arafat perfectly summarized the experiences of many children of immigrants. The narrator comments a few times on how she felt she didn’t fit in in the United States, but at the same time did not feel like she fit in in Palestine/Jordan. The narrator states, “It is a bizarre and unsettling feeling, to exist in a liminal state between to realms, unable to attain full access to one or the other.” It is difficult for first-generation Americans to find that balance of honoring their culture while adapting to the new traditions in the US.
There is one issue I had with this book. There is a lot of backstory intertwined with the current plot. For approximately 30% I found that I just wanted the story to continue with the narrator where she currently was, instead of experiencing a jump back in time to a summer she had in Jordan twenty years prior. It sometimes created a ripple in the flow and read more like a diary than a novel. I needed to brace myself and just power through a few sections of backstory from when the narrator was in college, in order to get to the better parts.
In conclusion, 3.5/5 stars, rounded up to 4. This novel is a strong story of learning to love in your own way while dealing with a difficult family history and balancing two cultures. I’d recommend this book to friends who may be feeling as if they also exist in between two realms. I would not recommend this book for anyone who is looking for a big, juicy plot, and this book is much more character driven than plot driven. There are some superfluous scenes from the past that dragged on too much.

You Exist Too Much is an interesting book. It didn't turn out to be what I expected, but I really enjoyed what it is. The book is narrated by an unnamed Palestinian-American queer woman, and the back of the book made me expect a lot of exploration of the clash between identity and culture. I continued to expect this at the beginning of the book, but ultimately I found it a much more personal than political exploration.

I can't speak to the accuracy of the depictions of bisexuality or the Palestinian-American experience within this book, but I found the narrator's individual journey compelling. At the base of this story is a piece about mothers and daughters. The narrator is profoundly affected by her relationship with her mother, and I see the book as being largely about how she navigates those effects.

I initially gravitated toward this title because I thought it would offer a voice I haven't seen represented much in the fictional world of books, television, or film. What ended up being interesting about this book, though, is that it didn't end up being a book about "other" for me. Many pieces that explore underrepresented voices often emphasize that sense of otherness, which I think can be important. Here, though, those elements are really just additional elements that shape the character just as her family and experiences have, and I think this is also a worthy approach in that it centres the character as an individual. White, cis, heterosexual male characters get to have stories in which they are individuals shaped by experiences rather than demographics, so I appreciate that our narrator in You Exist Too Much was also given this opportunity.

The structure of this story is interesting and has a rawness to it that keeps the pages turning. It is not a demanding read but compelling nonetheless.

This book started out so great that I recommended it to several people. Unfortunately by the end I no longer enjoyed it.

There is a gentle sweetness to this story that surprised me given the subject matter. The novel doesn't demand too much of the reader. The language is a little high-school-essayish, and in places sounds so rhetorically flat that it gives the effect of being narrated by a non-native speaker, someone who learned the language in a classroom. Maybe this is the intended effect.

For example, here are a couple of randomly chosen short paragraphs--

1) "A week had passed since the restaurant incident. Anya and I had been trying to act as though nothing had happened, but the memory of that night was still thick between us. That evening we were both at home, reading on opposite ends of the couch--me a novel, and she leather-bound law books--when my phone buzzed. My heart leaped when I saw who the message was from: the professor.

2) "Two months later, I take a bus from New York to Washington to see my mother, who's just returned from overseas after settling all of Teta's affairs. Anouk and I plan to move in together soon, and it's time to tell my mother about her, as much as I've resisted doing so."

This kind of writing will flow easy for some readers, They will have no problem at all with "my heart leaped" or "as much as I've resisted doing so." These readers will inhabit the story, rather than worry about how it is told. But I personally prefer my literary novels to take more chances with language, and to say things in more unique and precise ways.

“I know that by letting her in when I'm in need, I tie myself to her again, this gaping vulnerability nothing less than the rope." / "In receiving love from others, it will always be hers I crave most."

Though it took me a little while to make my way through this book, I really really enjoyed it. Our unnamed protagonist is a queer woman who is not sure of who she is, what she wants, or where to call home, and I connected with her on almost every level besides sexuality. Though I have not been in treatment in an institution for an eating disorder or mental health, I've struggled with eating disorders as well, continuously tried to get help for my mental health, and have encountered so many issues within myself because of my mother. While reading this I thought of my own relationships, and why they have failed. I truly was not expecting to connect to this book as much as I did, but I'm eternally grateful for it. I often find it hard to express my feelings on this subject of mother/daughter relationships and I think Arafat does an amazing job of putting all of those feelings into very relatable words. I loved learning about our protagonist, even if she is selfish at times and does the wrong things - she seems unlikable at first but I felt all throughout that she was just trying to figure herself and her life out and struggling with it. Which I mean, who isn't? The explorations of sexuality and identity in reference to "home", especially in another country, was really interesting to me and I learned a lot from it. I loved how the narrative switched back and forth from the US to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine, and how each of these places shaped her and the person she has become, as well as the person she is by the end of the story. While I connected with this book personally on many levels, I think that it was also just written so very well and made me think about so much which I always really appreciate. I'm excited to see what's next!!

"You exist too much." These are the words of a mother to our unnamed narrator. It is ironic that she would choose these words to berate her child considering that her character comes off too full of her own self and her own existence. She really sees everything as it pertains to her and how it would affect her. There is no compassion or empathy there. Not especially for her daughter. Instead, she blames the narrator for her sacrifice. The life she would have had had she not fallen for her father. Where she would have gone in the world if she had not got pregnant with the narrator a year later. As you can see her mother is cruel and abusive. This mother-daughter relationship, its codependency, the abusive behavior is what our narrator brings into all of her love relationships.

Throughout the novel we see her try to deal with these issues through rehab centers and twelve step programs. But she is messy. Her baggage pollutes anyone who comes to love her as she cheats and invests her time in other people. She is a love addict. In love with the idea with being in love, but never loving the one she is with. Instead she chases after the unattainable - her counselor, her professor, married straight women. She is reckless.

Not knowing how to love herself or considering herself worthy of love, she sees herself through her mother's eyes. And although she knows that their relationship is dysfunctional she still craves her mother's affection and attention. Does she figure it all out and fix herself up in the end? I am not sure. As with real life we come to know what our flaws are and we may understand the root of our problems. Regardless of how much work we may put in we will never be perfect. We can only hope that we are better versions of ourselves.

Special thanks to NetGalley, Catapult and Zaina Arafat for access to this book."

First off, I have to say this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. If you’ve been following me for awhile you know I love Middle Eastern lit and obviously as a queer woman who has been begging and pleading for more queer women’s stories finding this one was amazing. I’ve been telling people about it and recommending it for so many months. And as a Jewish woman who reads more Israeli lit than most, I’ve been making the effort to read more Palestinian authors. There are some scenes that take place at the Israeli/Palestinian border that were uncomfortable for me to read but I was glad that I did and grateful they were included.

I did not expect this book to hit quite so close to home but at the center of this one in so many ways is how our earliest relationships and experiences shape us and our unnamed narrator in You Exist Too Much has a mother who I’d definitely call a narcissist. When you grow up knowing your mothers live is very conditional (and that try and try and TRY as you might you never can seem to meet those conditions, not really) it damages you. You live your life certain that if your own mother couldn’t love you, maybe no one ever will, and spend your time guarding your heart. What this looks like from the outside varies and on the most basic level I have coped much differently than the narrator in this book but as she attends a rehab like facility for “love addiction” and is forced to confront her issues, underneath it all, oof, the narrator and I sure had so much in common.

And that wasn’t always pleasant to realize. Sometimes she drove me absolutely mad with the horrible decisions she made. I had to sit with this book after finishing and then just start throwing down thoughts to even begin to figure out how to review it. I’ve read quite a few books in recent months with unlikeable and very troubled characters and they’ve all kind of had this same general theme of making you understand why these characters behave the way they do and make the choices you can’t stand. That’s something very special and I’m well aware in many ways I didn’t always like this character for the mirror she was holding up to myself.

On this subject, I wanted to include a quote from the author from an interview with The Rumpus discussing this book-
“This leads to another question I get asked a lot, which is, “why is the narrator so painful?” And I think the answer is that this is the reality of internalized homophobia. It’s what being abused looks like. It looks like a constant inclination to sabotage yourself and project that self-loathing onto others, and thwart your ability to find love, which is the only thing the character really wants. It was meant to be an unflinching look at how these conditions can manifest in human beings.”

The above may not be immediately clear to every reader and I, on some level, didn’t totally want to see it but yes. This. I know I can be every bit as intense, self protective and self sabotaging (I find those two go perversely hand in hand for many), and often unintentionally abrasive as the character in this story. In the book our narrator ponders- “I’m aware I can be exhausting—‘you exist too much,’ my mother often told me.”
The title of this book is what immediately drew my attention and excited me and I know this is because I’m incredibly familiar with that feeling, believing I’m too much, I exist too much. In fact the more I discuss this, the more I think I’m bumping my rating. I have never read another book that reflected so much and so well on these very difficult parts of myself. And I think I’m also in place and space to finally be owning my own damage and working to heal. I needed this novel.

Reading it, in fact, I had to triple check it wasn’t nonfiction because woah does it ever read that way. The detailed memories, the extremely familiar sort of narcissistic behavior from the mother, this books reads raw, rawer than many memoirs even get. I’m still curious how much of it may be based of Arafat’s own experiences (and good gosh would I ever love to meet her and discuss her book with her!)

In addition to the above, the other underlying theme of the novel is a constant sense of displacement. This exists in relation to the narrators relationship with her mother and the abuse there, with the homophobia- internal, external, cultural and religious, and also in the way our main character never fully fits in within the US or even the Arab diaspora community her family is a part of but when she spends summers in Jordan and the West Bank, she doesn’t fit in there either. Another favorite line of mine from the book is this comparison- “I’d been clinging to her I-love-yous like a refugee clings to a threatened nationality. They were the homeland that validated my existence.” And in another section she brings up being a people without a country and how lost that can make you feel when you’re forever a minority and don’t fit in but don’t have a place of your own.

Jumping back to what I said in my first paragraph, and including it because while this book is fiction, the author is a journalist and she has a master’s degree in international affairs, and parts of this book are inherently political- I found the last part above striking because if anything this is the thing Jews/Israelis and Palestinians both have in common, why so many Jews feel conflicted because we want, need, ache for our own homeland too. A favorite politician of mine, intimately involved in peace negotiations often says that it can’t be a religious negotiation because religious conflicts are unsolvable but reading this part of the book I began to wonder it the real issue is it’s an emotional, belonging and longing argument and if maybe that’s the most unsolvable conflict of all. I wasn’t expecting to gain a new outlook on a political issue so important to me but gosh, this book was meant for me. And I appreciate the endless things I gained from it. If that isn’t a testament to an incredible writer- I don’t know what is!

This wasn’t the review I expected to write either but I think it’s an incredibly honest one and a reflection on what this book is. Thank you to Zaina and Catapult not just for my early copy of the book, but for giving me a book that gave me so much, held a mirror up to many of my own experiences and most difficult parts of myself. This is the kind of book I’ll hold in my heart for a lifetime.

TL;DR REVIEW:
You Exist Too Much is an engaging story about a young Palestinian-American bisexual woman that raises all sorts of questions about depiction, family trauma, and mental health.

For you if: You like character-driven novels where the characters grapple with tough challenges, particularly related to culture and queerness.

FULL REVIEW:

Big thanks to Catapult for providing me with an early review copy of this book!

You Exist Too Much is a book that really got me thinking — about stereotypes, about complexity, about family and generational trauma, and about the way books can depict all those things.

The book is about a young Palestinian-American bisexual woman. She’s struggling to figure out how to bring the different pieces of her life together, as her mother will not be supportive of her queer lifestyle. Indeed, when she tries to tell her mother that her roommate is her long-term girlfriend, it’s a disaster. But her relationship with her girlfriend is also at risk.

As we will come to learn stems from deep-seated family trauma (“Good luck finding someone to love you like I did,” her mother hurls at her), the main character is notoriously unfaithful and treats romantic encounters like addicts treat drugs: as a distraction from reality, a way to feel something, a way to avoid dealing with her fears. She becomes obsessed with the version of a person she builds up in her mind and will destroy her own life against the rocks as she pursues them.

The story follows the main character as she seeks addiction therapy and begins the long journey of breaking her unhealthy compulsions and learning to build healthy relationships, with herself, with romantic partners, and maybe with her mother as well.

There is a lot about this book that I don’t have first-hand experience with — queerness, addiction treatment, family trauma, cultural disconnect — and so I can’t really speak to how well these were represented. That being said, here’s how they seemed to me, an outsider.

This is the first book I’ve ever read depicting queerness through a Palestinian-American lens, and that feels important. But it also brings up the question of whether this book harms bisexual people by playing into stereotypes about them being chronically unfaithful, throwing themselves at anyone and everyone. Personally, I felt like the author did this character justice, giving her a big, round enough background that it was clear her unhealthy behaviors were not because of her sexuality but because of the family trauma she’d experienced her whole life. That feels like a way to make space for stories that may be someone’s real truth, even if parts of them align with stereotypes.

I also find myself meditating on the question of how different this book would be if the main character had these unhealthy behaviors, but was straight. I think in many ways, one could tell this story that way, in that the triggers and backstory could plausibly cause it. And that is why it feels nuanced enough to move past the stereotypes. And yet also, you cannot change the fact that she’s bisexual without losing a sense of this book’s urgency and truth, because the character would not be her strong, rebellious, nuanced self without it. You would lose the half of the story that is not directly about her addiction.

I would really love to hear other people’s perspectives on this point in particular. As I said, I am an outsider to these experiences.

I do think that the way mental health and addiction treatment is depicted in this book felt like it was not as nuanced as it could be. But since her treatment is only the first half of the book and her recovery — which has so many bumps along the way — is the second, it seems like that may be because there was not a lot of space devoted to it,

Still, I think this book is absolutely worth your read, if only to spark you to contemplate these things, like it did for me.



TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Addiction, substance abuse, alcoholism, and overdose; Eating disorders; Homophobia and familial non-acceptance; Infidelity

his was absolutely lovely. I couldn't put it down. The prose is so immersive- you just get sucked into the story and can't leave. The vignettes move slowly, but they layer on each other so beautifully to give you the sensation of when you wake up from a vivid dream and can't shake it for the rest of the day. The description of border checkpoints and the cruelty of Israeli occupation is so sharply rendered, and adds so much depth to the book as the narrator grapples with how the trauma her Palestinian mother has endured manifests in their relationship. I'm so glad this book exists.

You Exist Too Much is such a change from my normal thriller and mystery dramas. It was a welcome pallet cleanser and left me a lot to think about.

It's a coming of age novel surrounding a bisexual Palestinian American woman. In addition to coming to terms with her sexuality, she also must come to terms with cultural differences, an eating disorder, and a contentious relationship with her mother. In an interesting turn, the reader doesn't learn the main character's name, but it works. You know her, you are her, with all of her insecurities and faults. As she's learning to accept herself, she is also trying to gain acceptance from her mother. Anytime she broaches the subject of her sexuality with her mother, she receives responses like, "you exist too much", or "I deserved better". It's painful, real, and it will stay on my mind for awhile.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

YOU EXIST TOO MUCH's unnamed narrator struggles with a lifetime of self-destructive relationships, beginning with her abusive mother. After yet another relationship implodes, she checks into an alternative therapy retreat to seek treatment for what's been labeled her "love addiction."

I have rather mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it's quite readable - I found myself drawn in to the story even when I wasn't sure I liked the book. The protagonist is a fascinating character, dealing with a soup of trauma and bad decisions that she desperately wants to fix, even though she has no idea how.

I enjoyed that while the narrator's identities - bisexual, Palestinian American, writer, etc. - are key to who she is but it isn't necessarily a story about her identities. Certainly the book wouldn't exist without the tension her identities create, but she feels like a whole person rather than a set of lessons.

YOU EXIST TOO MUCH walks riiight up to the trope of the cheating, voracious bisexual. It's about half a step from being a real negative stereotype. However, she's got just enough backstory that her actions feel true to what we know of her, though I felt a bit on edge about it for a lot of the book.

I do feel like this book wrapped up too quickly. Her retreat experience was lacking in any actual effective therapies, and then she just continued on as before for awhile until she was suddenly just dating the right person who made it all stop. I didn't really get the sense that she'd learned anything about herself, just that it was time for the book to be over.