There are several reasons why I decided to read this book and one of them is its title! When I came across this book and read the title—not to exaggerate, but—it literally pierced through my heart and then, the contents this book focuses on. I have read many different genres and I still believe that there are still many that I am yet to explore, but reading a book about queerness was something I have never read before. When I started this book, I was in doubt if all I am going to read is those cheesy and clingy things about love and romance—which I always prefer to avoid—but to my surprise, it was much more than that and just too sensitive about many things. To put it in simple words, I had never seen a world through a person's eyes who is struggling to find his/her sexuality and trying to make a place in the world. Zaina Arafat's 'You Exist Too Much' helped me to understand those raw realities about queerness and gave me a considerable point of view.
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'You Exist Too Much' is a phenomenal novel about an Arab bisexual protagonist who comes from a very conservative background of a Middle East family. A protagonist who is still exploring her sexual preference and somewhere between that she becomes a love addict. The big part of this book is about her series of tumultuous relationships with men and women, her flicks, and bonds with people. She tries her best but her relationships with women always fail her and make her even more miserable to herself.
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Throughout the book, the story moves between her past in the Middle East to her present life in America and sometimes in other countries. Her mother played a very vital part in how the protagonist sees the world and I also consider it the reason behind her being insecure and uncertain about all women she gets in a relationship with. Zaina Arafat's work as an author is brilliant and that can be understood only after realizing to what extent she made her protagonist so sensitive and makes the reader glued to her story.
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There wasn't a part that I felt was unnecessary and not a single flaw that I identified. Since the story starts, it progresses candidly and puts the readers in situations where even they question what the protagonist wants and where exactly she belongs. It's all about the ups and downs she faces in her life and finding answers in all the unexpected places. The good part about this book is it's happily ever after ending where even her mother accepts her sexuality and the protagonist confesses her relationship with a woman–Anouk.
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I will highly recommend this sensational book if someone wants to explore something new and sensitive, Zaina Arafat presented the rawest realities that queer people face. This book is about courage and standing strong for what one wants even if that means the roads of life might be blocked with nothing but chaos and uncertainty. It's about the hope that one should never lose and spirit that one should always stick to when it comes to finding a place where they belong. It's about cultural biases and beliefs and the protagonist's way of understanding the reason for her existence. Pick this book to experience various emotions as the protagonist's story moves; it will make you feel sad, concerned, worried, anxious, sometimes happy and sometimes its depressing setting would make you feel helpless to do anything for the protagonist. Last but not the least, read it for the author's efforts to make it so appealing and bringing something this enlightening to our knowledge!

We are taken through the life of a young Palestinian-American woman who is trying to exist in a world that is not made for her. We never get the name of the protagonist but we get to know her very well.

The themes in this book are incredible and diverse, we delve into bisexuality, trauma, cultural differences and obligations. This book promised to deliver so much but I personally was a bit let down. I loved the premise of the book and had such high expectations but ended up feeling underwhelmed by the end.

I just wanted to scream and shake the main character as she navigates through her life, I couldn’t connect with her because of the decisions she was making. I never felt she fully grasped that her actions have consequences.

The main character has such an obsession with love and connection but has an inability to look after it, and this stems from her withdrawn father and and mentally abusive mother. I think the toxic relationships were written beautifully and realistically.

The ending was a bit disconnected for me also but on a whole I believe the novel is written in a very engaging way but it just lacks the nuance I was after and expecting.

Another debut novel, You Exist Too Much strings together a set of beautifully-drawn vignettes like pearls lit from within, slowly connecting the motivations of a young woman feeling stuck between expectation, reality, religious and societal convention and choosing to follow her own path – or as the book’s epigram from Kierkegaard neatly sums up: “pleasure disappoints, possibility never.” Leaping from past to present, from the Middle East to the US, the chapters weave together the strands of the protagonist’s dreams and desires into an exquisitely written and provocative whole. After moving into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and faced with the prospect of domesticity, the narrator seemingly subconsciously and deliberately implodes the relationship by seeking and having affairs with others, often totally unobtainable individuals. Admitting and facing up to the destructive tendencies rooted deep within her, she seeks help at The Ledge, an unconventional therapy centre where she’s diagnosed with an addiction to love and forced to undergo numerous sessions with other addicts, all hunting their own resolutions. How can you find somewhere to call home when you float between worlds? Can the love given by another individual ever fill the void of not truly loving yourself? Though the book is painful in places it’s also perfectly paced, leading the reader slowly through realisations just like a brilliant therapist would: and as with Pandora’s box, there’s hope at the end. An impressive debut that’s well worth your time, and makes Zaina Arafat definitely one to watch

Cambridge Edition Book Club 'Autumn Reads' October 2020 (link to follow)

Zaina Arafat’s ‘You Exist Too Much’ wasn’t what I expected. There have been moments in the book which I really liked, and others that I haven’t enjoyed as much.

‘You Exist Too Much’ follows Palestinian-American queer woman on a journey of self-discovery. The book interchanges present moments with the recollections of events that has already happened, which explains the main character’s history, attitude and problems. Our protagonist as well as other characters in Zaina Arafat’s book are flawed and lost. While it makes them more realistic, it also heightens tension in the book as well as incredibly uncomfortable moments in life.

Our protagonist, who narrates the whole story, has been dealing with incredibly heavy problems – from eating disorder, love addiction to overall desire to belong somewhere and winning her mother’s approval. There have been really interesting moments of tensions between her (double) identity, and desire to please others as well herself. Those were the moments I really liked in ‘You Exist Too Much’. At moments, they have highlighted the cultural tension and politics, that while not at the forefront of the book, played a role in the background of ‘You Exist Too Much’.

While I have overall mixed feelings about the whole book, I have enjoyed the author’s voice a lot at moments, and I’m looking forward to more of their works.

‘You exist too much’ reads like a memoir and has all the emotional upheaval that comes with life, love and loss. Zaina Arafat is a fresh and authentic voice who tells the story of a young woman who lives in multiple worlds in order to keep all of the people in her life separate. The heartache she faces everyday knowing that her sexuality will never be accepted by the family and their traditional attitudes leaves her with problems of commitment and eternal guilt.
I didn’t know what to make of the main character in this book because I felt as an outsider she was self- sabotaging her relationships for no good reason but as her story went on I could see how her past had made her question everything about her present and future. The whole tone of this book is raw and unapologetically honest and I grew to love that by the end. Arafat ties in her own heritage with the importance of cultural and religious identity which although I don’t share I can see the universality that everyone is just trying to find their place in the world and that can be a lonely journey if we only tie ourselves to other people’s ideals and happiness.
A completely unique and heart wrenching read.

This book was an ARC which I was kindly given access to by @netgalley and Little Brown Books Group UK.
When I saw the blurb of this book, I was extremely excited to read it! It follows a Palestinian-American narrator through her childhood and adulthood. This books is an exploration of her cultural, religious and sexual identity, through relationships with women, men, her mother, father and friends.
The themes explored were very much up my alley, and I did get more and more attached to the narrator, but I found the first half of the book hard to get through. There were many jumps in time, which happened in a very unannounced way. I do not usually mind jumps in time, however this time it quite confused me. I may have liked a bit more of an introduction to the narrator’s childhood early on in the book. In the end, everything made sense, and I feel like I had a good understanding of the character, but in the first half, I just felt a great distance between the narrator and myself, which is fairly unusual for a first-person narrative.
I did really love that this was a quest for identity, and discovering more of the Palestinian culture was very important to me. I just don’t feel like I have discovered enough, so I hope I will find more books by Palestinian authors to fill the void!
All in all this is a good debut novel, and I will be looking forward to what Afarat publishes next!

This was such an interesting exploration of love, relationships, addiction, trauma, and so many more things. It was a, to me at least, unique perspective, and it was so well written. Zaina Arafat captured me from the beginning, but unfortunately I felt like the middle was a little bit slow for me. This is an incredibly difficult book, and I cannot imagine it was easy to write - I'm glad it was. I'm really glad I got to read it, and I would not hesitate to pick up another book from Arafat. The only thing that genuinely bothered me was that it felt like the protagonists' mother was supposed to be forgiven in the end, which I personally don't agree with. However, it could also just be seen as reason but not excuses.

After so many bad reviews I had very low expectations but it was definitely very interesting and important read. I was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed it and found it hard to put in down and go to sleep. Therefore I fell asleep with a Kindle on my chest.

It's a story of a young, queer Palestinian woman caught between her family expectations, religion, culture and her sexual identity. Having strict, abusive mother doesn't help. It's really heartbreaking when she tells her daughter, that she exist too much, yet most of the time she doesn't even register the girl's existence.

The unnamed narrator struggles with forming a healthy relationship due to her “love addiction”, it makes her obsessed with people. She makes a lot of bad decisions which have a great impact on her future. Finally she decides to go for an unconventional treatment that's supposed to help her with her addiction.

Writing about such a taboo is a real challenge and in my opinion Zaina Arafat has succeeded .

Character-driven, painfully sincere and heartbreakingly beautiful; Arafat's "You exist too much" taps into the themes of "otherness", of love and self-acceptance, of desire and the search for one's own identity.

I don't often read literary fiction and this novel has reminded me why I need to change that, especially when it comes to literary fiction written by authors of colour with characters of colour. I found this a really captivating. beautifully written read. This is an own voices novel about an American Palestinian queer woman (from a Muslim background, I believe, though I don't think the main character identified as Muslim, nor was she depicted to be religious in any way). That alone already makes this novel stand out, as unfortunately, Palestinian representation is so rare in mainstream fiction, never mind queer Palestinian representation. I thought the author did a really great job of interweaving the main character's cultural identity and heritage into the story, and I really appreciated the way they mentioned and brought in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict too.

This book covers a number of very important and quite serious themes, including homophobia, racism, addiction, eating disorders, abuse, and toxic family/romantic/sexual relationships. To me, however, it did seem as though the author tried to fit too much into this novel as I thought some of the themes could have been covered in more detail, such as the main character's eating disorder.

If you've seen any other reviews of this book, you're probably aware of people's differing opinions on the bi representation in this novel. I agree that the bi representation did come across as slightly problematic – while I don't think the author intended to purposefully portray a bi character in a way that plays into harmful stereotypes, the reality of rampant biphobia and the serious lack of positive bi representation in fiction means having a bi main character who is a "love addict" and repeatedly cheats on her partners comes across as quite damaging to the bi community, and I can certainly see why people would be unhappy with this representation. Having said that, if you don't think this sort of thing will upset or trigger you in any way, I wouldn't let it put you off from reading this book as I think there's still a lot that a (particularly queer/POC) reader can get out of it. While I've rated this book 4 stars, it probably lies between 3.5-4 stars for me.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Zaina Arafat: You Exist Too Much.
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“It is a bizarre and unsettling feeling, to exist in a liminal state between two realms, unable to attain full access to one or the other”

Arafat explores identity, sexual preference, and sex itself, in conjunction with family, religion, tradition, (in)fidelity and addiction. You Exist Too Much deals with difficult topics, and so at times it is awkward or uncomfortable. I found that a lot of the main characters relationships evoked these feelings, especially the dynamic between her and her mother, and her and her partners.

I didn’t realise until I started writing this review, that the name of the main character is never revealed. We know her mothers, her brothers, her families, her friends and her lovers- but never hers. We are privy to her every thought and feeling, her past and her present, yet we don’t know her name. She spends a lot of the book questioning her identity, and I think being nameless (striking a perfect dichotomy with the books title) so perfectly encapsulates her desperation as she struggles to maintain a sense of self.

She isn’t necessarily a likeable character. Her self-sabotage is frustrating, she repeatedly makes bad choices, she’s rude. But her honesty was refreshing, her struggles were real and she demonstrates progress and development (although not necessarily when she should). I know she’s flawed, she knows she’s flawed and Arafat definitely knows she’s flawed- that’s the whole point.

This is the first book that I’ve read from net galley. I’m really glad that I found it, and that I was approved. While I’d normally rate a book that I’m reviewing, I don’t think its fair to when the book hasn’t yet been released. But I definitely enjoyed it, and would be interested in reading future books by Arafat.

You Exist Too Much is released on November 19th 2020.

(this review will be posted on my instagram account @crosslingreads later this week or early next week)

"Worst than receiving rage was the ability to detect its remnants".

The novel opens with it's protagonist trading trousers with their uncle at a tourist site in Bethlehem, realising the limitations and the realities of becoming a young woman- with it the expectation to cover her legs when within a biblical city. "Wearing my uncle's baggy trousers, I enjoyed occupying blurred lines. Ambiguity was an unsettling yet exhilarating experience."

Within this lies the crux of the novel. This is a portrayal of existing between the lines and how this shapes self view, relationships and the ability to confront universal truths that don't always feel applicable. Much of her self lies hidden in many ways; from her mother's lack of acceptance towards her bisexuality, to covering up her true thoughts and desires to the people she forms relationships with. The fact is, many truths exist- she is Palestinian living within the USA; she is bisexual; she is a woman; she is a recovering anorexic; she is revelling from the conflicts of her childhood.

"'Do you know what the definition of insanity is?'
I mumbled, 'It's doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.'
'Right. And whatever that thing is, it's precisely what landed you here'."

We follow our narrator on her journey to identifying her lack of ability to be intimate with people on an emotional level. After another blow, she checks into a facility to aim to deal with love addiction. It feels to me as some of the narrator's own self can appear fluctuating to her- caught between the conflicts of her birth culture and home, for example, and between both fearing and loving a mother who is rejecting. As she finds how to let others is, ultimately a task is to help find herself and to explore how she can actualise and become the person she really is.

There are powerful passages here, where the lines feel more clearly drawn. To see the narrator analyse what it means to be Palestinian, for example. These moments pop up throughout, "I [feel] a pinch of guilt for being in Italy and not on the West Bank, volunteering with refugees or resisting the opposition.. 'I have no responsibilities here,' I said. 'And no ties to anyone.'
When she attends a function back in her birth country, she has to ask officials not to stamp her passport as she passes through the border from Israel, as this would make it difficult to then be able to re-visit her friends in Lebanon. The conflict of this mirrors her own personal struggles, most of which are asserting her own identity and accepting herself enough to be vulnerable to it. She feels able to build relationships and have sexual encounters, but how far can this be ultimately followed through, with the core knowledge of her mother's opinion and the guttural sting of this?

"I am lost in my mother's possibility, in what couldn't been, caught between her frustrated potential and a desire to fulfil my own... Our mutual sacrifice creates wounds that may never heal".

This is a story of relationships. I would say the key one is the relationship with the self and in placing yourself in life in relation to that, so that actually things can grow and bloom. It's also a story of conflicts, that affect every aspect.

I have rounded up to a 4 from a 3.5. I love the themes and the writing has a lot of potential. I just feel this could have been slightly more refined in its representations and could have pushed even further with its subject matter though. A promising debut novel and I'll certainly watch out for Arafat.

Thanks to netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book.

This book follows an American-Palestinian unnamed narrator living in America and navigating her way through life. “You exist too much” are the words her mother tells her in response to the main character which haunt her throughout her life and subsequent relationships.

This story focuses on the mother-daughter relationship with the backdrop of Arabic culture; the relationship is strained once the main character turns out to be very different from her mother but she still yearns for comfort and acceptance. This codependent, abusive relationship that started at a young age shapes the narrator and sets the scene for what relationships in adulthood will look like for her. Her mother also regrets much of her own life, falling pregnant at a young age and in an extremely unhappy marriage. This of course has an effect on the main character.

The main character obsesses about people, diagnosed as a ‘love addict’, who obsesses/chases after the unattainable but is fearful when things get too serious, seeing herself the way her mother sees her perhaps - not good enough. She goes through many unhealthy relationships, shattering hopes of any future, breaking trust and being dishonest. She goes to a rehab centre to try to better herself and learn how to not repeat past behaviours.

I thought this story was great. The first person narrative was fantastic and so personal that it felt like reading someone’s diary. The honest, messy baggage of this character was something that a lot of people can relate to; the feeling of never being good enough, or not meeting the expectations of others. The rawness of her emotions were so real that I almost felt what the main character felt.

I have never read a book with Arabic and LBGT representation and it thought it was so important to read about. The cultural implications of her sexuality and subsequent hurt was devastating and it makes me wonder how many people feel this way. Our childhoods do truly affect us and our past experiences follow us everywhere we go - affect everything we do. The main character was desperate for her mother’s acceptance and love, despite her mother being narcissistic in her approach to her daughter, her choices and her sexuality. Ultimately the main character is lost, and doesn’t quite know where home is.

It was heartbreaking at many points of this book but I think this is a really great, important read. I loved this. This is definitely a book I will re-read in the future. This was brilliantly written.

CW: cheating, eating disorders, mentions of self harm/suicide, abusive relationships.

Upon reading the blurb for this book, I thought I'd be reading about the aforementioned twelve-year-old girl. Instead, I was brought to the life of a twenty-something unnamed narrator, a Palestinian American queer woman coming to terms with her love addiction, who forced herself to sift through her childhood in order to heal. On one hand, I do feel like I've been given something else compared to what was promised. On the other, despite really disliking the protagonist, I could not help but continue reading. This book actually reminds me a lot of Never Have I Ever series on Netflix, where the main character is so problematic yet I continue watching the show anyway.

You Exist Too Much basically explores the protagonists different stages in life while she's in a 30-day rehab program for love addicts and her post rehab years. From her relationship with her parents, coming to terms with her sexuality, encounters with older men (or pedophiles, to put it simply) to her reckless encounters that would eventually wreck her relationship beyond repair. She definitely hit rock bottom with this one. I am conflicted because as much as I hate her for what she's done, the fact that she's trying to fix herself kept echoing at the back of my mind, as if to urge me to forgive her, or at least be kind. I felt like I was being commanded to pity the protagonist, which I didn't like at all.

Overall, this fell flat for me. I felt like the flashbacks did not really have purpose or helped the plot in any way. The story became excruciatingly dull to me and I find this very unfortunate as I was really looking forward to reading this one.

I was really looking forward to reading this and had high hopes. From the beginning i was really interested and excited to read a novel from the viewpoint of a Palestinian bisexual woman. Along the way, i got lost in the plot: whether is was past tense or present, the changing between the protagonist coming out to her mum, verses her being an inpatient wasnt clear to me. I had no idea if it was going between past and present or not. I was also caught off guard with the mention of anorexia- not just the mention but the habits food wise, which was triggering as a survivor myself. I also found it weird that she had a jewish boyfriend who was “pro palestinian”. This is a weird suggestion that jewish people arent naturally pro-palestine? Equating ‘jews’ with israeli gov.

On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-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 mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter. Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East―from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine and between past and present-day―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 and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment centre 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 poignant and provocative debut in which the unnamed central character attempts to accept herself, as well as gaining acceptance from others, as she comes of age. It's a story of unbridled desire, identity, belonging, sexuality, queerness, mental health, love addiction, toxic relationships, trauma, unfaithfulness, family, friendship and the feeling of being caught between two different cultures, religions and sexual identities. The way it is written captivated me right from the start and it flowed effortlessly from page to page. The narrative immerses you until you feel as though you are living in the same world the characters are facing and the flashbacks to the past were superbly executed. This is very much a character-driven novel and as you warm to the protagonist you find yourself desperately wanting her to grow and evolve and find herself. An excellent, engrossing debut; I look forward to seeing what Arafat produces next. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Dialogue Books for an ARC.

Started off great, but lagged in the middle and I got fairly disinterested. The writing while immersive didn't captivate me long enough to enjoy the story.

You Exist Too Much follows a Palestinian woman who was raised mostly in America. The unnamed main "too much" character who struggle with her sexuality, her culture, relationships, control and a love addition. Her struggles lead her to seek treatment in a facility for her addition to love where she comes face to face with her trauma and upbringing.

Arafat writes well about such a unique subject matter and the importance of identity and what makes you yourself. Arafat jumps in and out of time frames in an easy to follow way, I enjoyed the flashback scenes a lot more than the present day story. There where a few things that weren't really discussed like her career as a DJ.

I think this book would be a very powerful read for those who do struggle with similar issues to the main character.

First of all thank you to Netgalley, Little Brown Book Group UK and Zaina Arafat for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

You Exist Too Much is described as the story of a Palestinian American woman and her struggle with queerness, relationships and love addiction. It flashes between her life now and her younger years in which you discover more about her family life and culture, and how that impacts her.

Reading this description I was very excited, I wanted to read this coming of age story about a struggle with queerness! However, this wasn’t exactly that. From the description I had pictured someone younger, and someone that would struggle more with their queerness but it focuses more on the struggle that she has with love addiction and toxic relationships (both romantically and familial). This wasn’t a major disappointment as it was still interesting but it wasn’t what I had expected so it did throw me off a bit.

Next, I honestly didn’t realise that throughout the book Zaina Arafat doesn’t name the main character. When it came to writing this review I realised, but I didn’t realise before because I honestly didn’t connect to her too much, she was annoying at times and I really didn’t like how she treated others, which I think was the point of her. But, even though I didn’t notice until after I had finished the book, I still think that it was a really clever device and definitely one that I hadn’t seen before.

The plot wasn’t massively existent, with more of a focus on her relationships and the therapy that makes her reconsider how relationships should be, and her reflections upon previous relationships. It really did feel like there was one relationship after another which was a bit annoying as none of the partners were that interesting and were all very toxic, save the last one. I did however really enjoy the therapy scenes, although in my opinion they were cut too often and at first I was seriously concerned that she had joined a cult.

The exploration into how her mother had affected her so much that it filtered through to all of her relationships was really interesting, and I really enjoyed it. However, at the same time I would’ve liked to see her take more accountability for her own actions and even talk it all through with her mother properly. But it was really interesting to see the impact it had on her, and how her relationships suffered because of it.

One thing I didn’t really like was that the story jumped around a lot, it became hard to keep track of what was going on at times and why one bit was relevant to the previous. This would mainly happen in the therapy sessions, where it would jump from one long anecdote on a subject, back to the therapy for one paragraph and then to another unrelated anecdote. And later on in the book there is a switch where the main character gives us background on her mother’s upbringing but does so in the third person until she is born and it feels like it is written really differently, it threw me off.

Before I read the book I saw a review that said that this book had awful representation for bisexual people (as the main charcter suffers from love addiction and cheats on partners fairly regularly), which can be really damaging to the stereotypes that bisexual people face. While to some extent I agree that the book didn’t do wonders for those stereotypes, it also didn’t claim that this was something all bisexual people face, but rather something that this character faced because of her parents and how their relationship and how they treated her had a direct impact on her and her future relationships. I think it definitely would have been nice to have some good representation in the book, i.e. a bisexual character in a loving relationship or who does not approve of the main characters decisions, but ultimately the main character’s issues would be the same on any one regardless of sexuality. And the main character does want to overcome her issues and be in healthy, committed relationships with either a man or woman (and by the end we hope she has done this).

All in all I enjoyed it, I liked the writing and although I wish it had done some things better it was enjoyable and an interesting insight into some of the hardships that come with culture and sexuality. I’m not sure that I would read it again but it was a nice read, and a good debut novel.

‘Baggage. No one ever breaks free from it. Everyone has to figure out how to go on living, to be decent, in spite of it.’

Wonderful debut, reads like a memoir. I was hooked from the beginning and so eager to see the protagonist grow through the story and learn about the relationship with her mother. Beautiful language and interesting character.