... a perfect example of how culture and family can affect those whose lives span different realities ... More than just a novel with a plot ... Arafat tries to do a lot in this novel, and she pulls it off ... This is not a happy novel. There are shining moments of friendship and fun, but they are highs in a life that's an almost constant low ... This constant state of discontent gives You Exist Too Much a bleak atmosphere that's reinforced by some of the narrator's thoughts ... Despite its depressing tone, there is hope in this story ... this is a novel that uses examination of the self as a vehicle to explore the impact of migration and sexuality on young people caught between cultures ... In that regard, this book is about much more than being multicultural; it offers a messy, multilayered, flawed, insecure character as proof that multi-everything should be a category, because humans are too complicated for every other classification and multicultural leaves out things like sexuality and mental illness. At once complicated and engaging, this is the kind of debut novel that announces the arrival of a powerful new author who, besides writing beautifully, has a lot to say.
Unfortunately, the story fails to fully connect the daughter’s suffering with that of the mother, brushing aside Laila’s history ... But a novelist has the imaginative power to grant access to her most dynamic characters’ lives as they are relevant, and to make structural choices to bring various thematic tunes into concert. Arafat limits the story’s scope to the narrator’s experiences, and the novel is the poorer for it, as the prose is liveliest and most affecting when describing Laila and her relationship to the narrator. Indeed, the book’s best lines belong to Laila ... The way the narrator navigates gender expectations within Middle Eastern culture is equally enthralling ... But these revelatory moments are too sparsely interspersed among a litany of destructive sexual exploits, giving the novel the breathless feel of an overstuffed therapy session, and reducing what might have been a probing examination of the way generational trauma is passed down to a narrow journey through one young woman’s romantic travails.
An unpretentious read, what the novel lacks in richness and layers, it makes up for in accessibility and honesty, steering clear of the stereotypes that so often plague characters from a Middle Eastern background ... You Exist Too Much commits a few classic errors of the debut novel. It trusts the reader too little and explains too much. The jumps between past and present occur too frequently at certain points and without the breadth necessary for the reader to become fully immersed in one scene before proceeding to the next. It could be argued that this intentionally mirrors the narrator’s own meandering thoughts as she processes her past, but there is little in the way of structure in these flashbacks. A nonlinear format would need more room to breathe. There is a sizable cast of characters, perhaps too many for a novel with such tight space. Largely indistinguishable apart from some surface-level traits, the narrator’s lovers blend into one another ... Nevertheless, it must be said that You Exist Too Much fills the queer Middle Eastern gap in the literary market. Moreover, it does so with a lead who is sympathetic and a story line that avoids the tropes that often accompany characters contending with their sexuality. The novel’s bittersweet conclusion is natural, not forced, favoring resolution through empathy and quiet acceptance over the spectacle of a grand reconciliation or confrontation.
Arafat begins her book in promising fashion, with an unnamed 20-something bisexual protagonist finally revealing to her mother, Laila, who is visiting her in New York from Washington, D.C., that her housemate is her girlfriend. But the author then mires the ensuing drama in a prosaic and thoroughly middle-class tale of maternal imperiousness and filial resentment.
... a raw and unsettling exploration of a young girl’s shifting foundations. Arafat’s sure hand draws readers across time periods and places, weaving the narrator’s past formative experiences with her present-day choices and questions. The narrator is heartbreaking in her precarious teetering between extreme self-awareness and naivete, but Arafat steers clear of easy answers and pat solutions. The narrator may know best: life is messy, love is messier, and finding one’s place in the world may just be an impossible dream.
... an engrossing character study of a young, bisexual Palestinian American woman. Much more than an exploration of intersecting lines and identities, the debut novel revels in their clouding ... This is not a book about isms, however; it is squarely centered on its unnamed protagonist, whose voice is enthralling. Oscillating between prescient self-awareness and oblivion, she transports readers into her rich emotional realm. Her identity is beautifully captured ... the novel’s brilliant exposé on a real psychological condition [love addiction] will leave you, well, addicted and wanting more ... This novel is truly captivating. I read it several times over and found something new each time.
...compelling ... The impact of that namelessness never really hits home until the book, rather than concluding, simply ends ... Arafat covers a great deal of emotional, cultural, geographical and sensual ground in capturing the fragmented existence of a young Palestinian American woman caught amid conflicting expectations ... Fictional by creation, but quite believable in its depth of psychological and social detail, You Exist Too Much evokes the malaise experienced by all too many women whose transitions from childhood through youth and adulthood lack strong landmarks.
Ambivalence, the state of having contradictory feelings or ideas about something or someone, runs like a dark river through Zaina Arafat’s powerful debut novel ... Ambivalence is mined again as the narrator reflects on a period in her life during college when she had outpatient treatment for an eating disorder. These vignettes feel slighter than other narrative strains due to their retrospective quality, but the paradoxes of eating disorders are evident, the denial set against enormous need, the starvation amid plenty, the rejection of and desire for different aspects of femininity, the ferocious visibility of an illness whose sufferer yearns to go unseen ... Arafat skilfully mirrors these themes with other aspects of the narrator’s life: her job as a DJ, 'the ecstasy of performance, the unrelenting command of attention,' and the multiple affairs throughout the book as she seeks out sex or obsessively focuses her attentions on various unattainable people to dampen other more painful emotions ... Treatment for this so called 'love addiction' forms the core of the book ... Structurally, this doesn’t quite come off ... With You Exist Too Much , Arafat announces herself as a provocative and insightful writer willing to delve into unpleasant aspects of family and society. The level of self-awareness elevates the novel from misery literature.
Arafat’s novel offers a different way of coming to terms with the self. It is a vivid character sketch of a young woman whose existence surpasses the limits of an identity bound by geo-political conflicts, heteronormativity, and intergenerational traumas. While honoring identity and origin(s), the novel also explores desires and mistakes, and ultimately, one’s capacity to exist too much ... The novel works in fragments and layers. Hovering over her mother’s presence and her shard-like memories is the larger history of violence in Palestine and the Middle East ... I realized when I finished the book that failure can give way to newness. It can lead to a greater understanding of one’s limits, as well as a reckoning with the vastness that resides within. Failure can also foster compassion and empathy towards others who may have failed us. In a particularly insightful moment, the narrator realizes that her mother, who she describes as having borderline personality disorder, may have mistreated her throughout her childhood and adolescence out of a place of regret and unfulfillment.
... poignant if uneven ... Despite the rushed final third, Arafat writes movingly of being caught between identities, homelands, and obligation and desire. This difficult but heartfelt wonder delivers an emotional wallop.
Reading about [the narrator] describe her life is a lot like being friends with someone who needs to give you every detail about their exploits in self-destruction and is incapable of heeding or even hearing the tiniest bit of reasonable advice. For some of us, it might be a treat to live vicariously. For others, it’s exhausting. How you feel about this book will largely depend on where you land on this matter. What is most interesting is the way Arafat navigates her protagonist’s complex identity ... Arafat’s protagonist is a messy, complicated character who doesn’t fit neatly into any single 'multicultural' category, and that, all by itself, is refreshing ... An uneven but, in some respects, intriguing debut.
