Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
New York : Catapult, [2020]
Description
On a hot day in Bethlehem, a twelve-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mothers response only intensifies a sense of shame: You exist too much, she tells her daughter.Told in vignettes that flash between the US and the Middle East, Zaina Arafat's debut novel traces her protagonist's progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as love addiction. In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings--for love, and a place to call home.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl
There is a lot going on here. The unnamed narrator is Palestinian-American who spends her summers with family in Amman, Jordan and in Nablus, on the West Bank. Her parents are immigrants, her mother is unpredictable and possibly mentally ill. She's bisexual and struggles with various
The novels opens with an unsettling experience in Bethlehem, when the narrator is twelve. While walking around the old city, she is yelled at by a group of men for wearing shorts. The thing that throws her into turmoil isn't the men's reactions to her, but her mother's reactions. As the novel progresses, fear of her mother's reactions to her take up an out-sized part of the narrator's life, even when she's an adult, living and working in a different city. As the narrator watches herself sabotage her relationship with her girlfriend, she's forced to come to terms with the harmfulness of her behaviors, and how most of the harm done is to herself.
The narrator is not someone I'd enjoy knowing in real life, but I loved spending time with her in the pages of a book. I like characters who can't help but blow up their own lives and she was engaging, intelligent and always had something going on. The glimpses of life Palestinian life were fascinating.
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self-destructive behaviors. She's not good at relationships, but needs to be in one. As I said, it's a lot for a single novel and it seems to be part of a slow change in publishing where characters can be more than one thing outside of the routine, and are no longer expected to be representative of anything but their own complex selves. Like actual people, in other words. The novels opens with an unsettling experience in Bethlehem, when the narrator is twelve. While walking around the old city, she is yelled at by a group of men for wearing shorts. The thing that throws her into turmoil isn't the men's reactions to her, but her mother's reactions. As the novel progresses, fear of her mother's reactions to her take up an out-sized part of the narrator's life, even when she's an adult, living and working in a different city. As the narrator watches herself sabotage her relationship with her girlfriend, she's forced to come to terms with the harmfulness of her behaviors, and how most of the harm done is to herself.
The narrator is not someone I'd enjoy knowing in real life, but I loved spending time with her in the pages of a book. I like characters who can't help but blow up their own lives and she was engaging, intelligent and always had something going on. The glimpses of life Palestinian life were fascinating.
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LibraryThing member bintarab
I received an ARC of this book through the Goodreads giveaway.
Unfortunately, the narrator of this novel -- our main protagonist -- doesn't exist enough.
The novel revolves around the narrator's sexuality, her relationships, and her sex life, with occasional glimpses of the woman's upbringing and
Although the narrator joins a rehab program, she has difficulty sharing her thoughts, feelings, and personal history with the other participants in group sessions. It's a symbol for how Arafat writes this novel: secretive about things Arafat doesn't want to reveal about her main protagonist. The reader has to take what's offered and be happy with it. Unfortunately, I wasn't.
For readers unfamiliar with Palestinian American experiences and wanting to learn more, this book is a convoluted, mixed up source of information, possibly intentionally so. Some of the author's descriptions of Palestinian American experiences (e.g. of crossing the border from Jordan to Palestine or of social life in Lebanon) are accurate depictions of common Palestinian American experiences. They are mixed with details that may be common or may just be particular to the narrator's life (such as her mother's apparent mental health issues or the conditions of her life after her parents' divorce). It would be hard for someone unfamiliar with Palestinian Americans to say, "Oh that's a common Palestinian American experience," or "That might just be this character's experience." In this way Arafat may be trying to keep her story from being upheld as a symbol of all Palestinian American experiences. Brava!
Sadly, the nature of the narrator's addiction means that she makes unreasonable decisions -- downright idiotic ones -- throughout the novel; she turns out to be one of those Too Stupid to Live characters that are no fun to follow in a story. Arafat isn't a good enough writer to keep me satisfied or interested as a reader. In fact, I finished the book feeling that I'd just wasted my time. Frankly, I don't know how this book got published.
~bint
Unfortunately, the narrator of this novel -- our main protagonist -- doesn't exist enough.
The novel revolves around the narrator's sexuality, her relationships, and her sex life, with occasional glimpses of the woman's upbringing and
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struggles as a person of two worlds (e.g. gay and straight, or Palestinian and American). But there are glaring gaps in the story that make the narrator feel like an unfinished character. For example, we are told at the beginning of the novel that the narrator is thrilled to get into a graduate writing program, yet her experiences & ambitions as a writer do not ever surface in this story. Did she never try to write about her struggles as a "sex addict," as a bi-sexual woman, as an Arab American? If she did, was that creative process so irrelevant to her psyche that it never had a place in this novel? And how did her professors and fellow graduate students react to her writings? It's as if the narrator doesn't exist outside of her sex life.Although the narrator joins a rehab program, she has difficulty sharing her thoughts, feelings, and personal history with the other participants in group sessions. It's a symbol for how Arafat writes this novel: secretive about things Arafat doesn't want to reveal about her main protagonist. The reader has to take what's offered and be happy with it. Unfortunately, I wasn't.
For readers unfamiliar with Palestinian American experiences and wanting to learn more, this book is a convoluted, mixed up source of information, possibly intentionally so. Some of the author's descriptions of Palestinian American experiences (e.g. of crossing the border from Jordan to Palestine or of social life in Lebanon) are accurate depictions of common Palestinian American experiences. They are mixed with details that may be common or may just be particular to the narrator's life (such as her mother's apparent mental health issues or the conditions of her life after her parents' divorce). It would be hard for someone unfamiliar with Palestinian Americans to say, "Oh that's a common Palestinian American experience," or "That might just be this character's experience." In this way Arafat may be trying to keep her story from being upheld as a symbol of all Palestinian American experiences. Brava!
Sadly, the nature of the narrator's addiction means that she makes unreasonable decisions -- downright idiotic ones -- throughout the novel; she turns out to be one of those Too Stupid to Live characters that are no fun to follow in a story. Arafat isn't a good enough writer to keep me satisfied or interested as a reader. In fact, I finished the book feeling that I'd just wasted my time. Frankly, I don't know how this book got published.
~bint
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LibraryThing member brookiexlicious
The novel is non linear, so passages set in the current will be sandwiched between flashbacks of the past. Our narrator describes her volatile relationship with her mother, and her struggles as a Palestinian American. She’s often reckless. She has the tendency to cling to dysfunctional
I fell into reading easily with this book. I loved the style of the prose and felt the flashbacks really helped you better understand the narrator and her behavior. As someone who hasn’t read many books featuring Arab characters (and I should be better about that) reading this book opened my eyes to parts of a culture that I knew nothing about.
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relationships and even seeks treatment for it. I can see how others would find her unlikable, but I found myself wanting the narrator to overcome her demons and find love. I fell into reading easily with this book. I loved the style of the prose and felt the flashbacks really helped you better understand the narrator and her behavior. As someone who hasn’t read many books featuring Arab characters (and I should be better about that) reading this book opened my eyes to parts of a culture that I knew nothing about.
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LibraryThing member brangwinn
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
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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. Show Less
LibraryThing member bookwyrmm
A tad artsy, even though I don't think it was meant to be that way.
LibraryThing member quondame
A somewhat raw time sliced life of a young woman overshadowed by a dramatically attractive mother whom she cannot please in any case and in particular in the matter of her bisexuality. The present concerns her reaction to the failure of her current relationship and her choice to go to therapeutic
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retreat for her "love addiction" during which her earlier life is reviewed piecemeal. There are definite moments of wanting to hit the protagonist and others upside the head. I found the flow somewhat fouled and some of the way of overlooking some consequences of choices off putting. Show Less
LibraryThing member kylekatz
2020. Uneven, but readable. The protagonist is a closeted, Palestinian-American woman, with a beautiful, but cruel, narcissistic mother. She’s been to recovery for anorexia and in the course of the story she spends a month at a treatment center for love/sex addiction. I didn’t see much healing
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result. She still had many and overlapping relationships after treatment. I guess I didn’t think the character progressed enough. Also it seemed to suffer from telling the reader what the emotions of the characters were rather than showing through their actions or dialogue sometimes. I wish there had been more about being Palestinian because that was really interesting, but it was much downplayed in favor of her obsessing about love and sex and her mother. Needed better editing I think. Somewhat lackluster. Show Less
Awards
Lambda Literary Award (Finalist — 2021)
ALA Over the Rainbow Book List (Longlist — Fiction and Poetry — 2021)
Language
Original publication date
2020-06-09
Physical description
263 p.; 22 cm
ISBN
9781646220595