Reviews
Praise for You Exist Too Much BuzzFeed , 1 of 83 Books to Keep on your Radar This Year "[A] provocative and seductive debut . . . Novels like these don't exist enough." -- O, The Oprah Magazine , 1 of 31 LGBTQ Books That'll Change the Literary Landscape This Year "A bildungsroman of desire, shame, and addiction." -- Electric Literature , 1 of 56 Books by Women & Nonbinary Writers of Color to Read This Year "A novel of self-discovery following a Palestinian-American girl as she navigates queerness, love addiction, and a series of tumultuous relationships." -- The Millions , One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year " You Exist Too Much gets desire at a deep level: where it comes from, how it pushes and tugs, and how it's virtually never just about who it's about. As the narrator pinballs from one disastrous affair to the next, we get more than the chronicle of a young full-blown love addict, but a keen study in how our wants are bound to place, race, gender, religion, psychology, and family. Zaina Arafat speaks for the persistently hungry." --Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens "Zaina Arafat has dreamed up a narrator who claws herself off the page in her aliveness, ripped between an insurmountable urge to chase desire and a longing for stability, cultural and familial acceptance, and lasting love. The result is an aching, deeply humane bildungsroman that superbly examines the gap between what we have and what we want. Arafat's narrator is propelled by a need to consume other people and know them deeply in attempts to satisfy a bottomless well of thirst. Reading You Exist Too Much will make you want to exist right beside its writer, learning from its stories forever." --Kristen Radtke, author of Imagine Wanting Only This "What a breath of fresh air! Zaina Arafat takes a familiar figure--the restless, womanizing narrator of many a canonical novel--and reimagines it to mordant and delightful effect. Her queer, Palestinian American, love-addict protagonist is pining mostly for a sense of belonging and purpose. She's a deeply relatable character who beautifully conveys the anguish of trying to figure out a life between categories of various kinds. You Exist Too Much is a moving, irreverent, darkly entertaining novel about the agony of family, the mysteries of romantic love, and the painful work of learning where we stop and others begin. Arafat is a true original." --Nina Renata Aron, author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls, "Thankfully we have moved beyond tedious questions about the 'likability' of fictional women, because the most interesting characters rarely are at all times. Arafat's heroine is no exception, but the author writes her with great tenderness and just enough self-aware dark humor to allow readers to become invested in this young woman's efforts to make herself whole." --Erin Keane, Salon "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." --Gabino Iglesias, NPR "This story about love, identity, gender and family is brilliantly written and questions the effects of maternal love." -- Good Morning America, Praise for You Exist Too Much " You Exist Too Much gets desire at a deep level: where it comes from, how it pushes and tugs, and how it's virtually never just about who it's about. As the narrator pinballs from one disastrous affair to the next, we get more than the chronicle of a young full-blown love addict, but a keen study in how our wants are bound to place, race, gender, religion, psychology, and family. Zaina Arafat speaks for the persistently hungry." --Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens, Praise for You Exist Too Much BuzzFeed , 1 of 83 Books to Keep on your Radar This Year Literary Hub , One of Reading Women 's Most Anticipated Books the Year "[A] provocative and seductive debut . . . Novels like these don't exist enough." -- O, The Oprah Magazine , 1 of 31 LGBTQ Books That'll Change the Literary Landscape This Year "In her uniquely written debut novel, Zaina Arafat tackles the challenges of being a queer Palestinian American attempting to disentagle identities to locate and celebrate the true self." --Karla Strand, Ms. "A bildungsroman of desire, shame, and addiction." -- Electric Literature , 1 of 56 Books by Women & Nonbinary Writers of Color to Read This Year "Told with sympathy and what seems like some irony, You Exist Too Much intrigues me for its multiculturalism and dissection of the notion that romantic love can be an all-bearing measure of personal fulfillment." --Eleni Theodoropoulos, Literary Hub , One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year "A novel of self-discovery following a Palestinian-American girl as she navigates queerness, love addiction, and a series of tumultuous relationships." -- The Millions , One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year " You Exist Too Much gets desire at a deep level: where it comes from, how it pushes and tugs, and how it's virtually never just about who it's about. As the narrator pinballs from one disastrous affair to the next, we get more than the chronicle of a young full-blown love addict, but a keen study in how our wants are bound to place, race, gender, religion, psychology, and family. Zaina Arafat speaks for the persistently hungry." --Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens "Zaina Arafat has dreamed up a narrator who claws herself off the page in her aliveness, ripped between an insurmountable urge to chase desire and a longing for stability, cultural and familial acceptance, and lasting love. The result is an aching, deeply humane bildungsroman that superbly examines the gap between what we have and what we want. Arafat's narrator is propelled by a need to consume other people and know them deeply in attempts to satisfy a bottomless well of thirst. Reading You Exist Too Much will make you want to exist right beside its writer, learning from its stories forever." --Kristen Radtke, author of Imagine Wanting Only This "What a breath of fresh air! Zaina Arafat takes a familiar figure--the restless, womanizing narrator of many a canonical novel--and reimagines it to mordant and delightful effect. Her queer, Palestinian American, love-addict protagonist is pining mostly for a sense of belonging and purpose. She's a deeply relatable character who beautifully conveys the anguish of trying to figure out a life between categories of various kinds. You Exist Too Much is a moving, irreverent, darkly entertaining novel about the agony of family, the mysteries of romantic love, and the painful work of learning where we stop and others begin. Arafat is a true original." --Nina Renata Aron, author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls, "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." --Gabino Iglesias, NPR "This story about love, identity, gender and family is brilliantly written and questions the effects of maternal love." -- Good Morning America "[A] provocative and seductive debut . . . Novels like these don't exist enough." O, The Oprah Magazine "Thankfully we have moved beyond tedious questions about the 'likability' of fictional women, because the most interesting characters rarely are at all times. Arafat's heroine is no exception, but the author writes her with great tenderness and just enough self-aware dark humor to allow readers to become invested in this young woman's efforts to make herself whole." --Erin Keane, Salon "As a narrative with an insistence on revisiting ruptures in memory, and unpacking the trauma therein, Arafat's novel is a direct resistance to pinkwashing and other homo-nationalistic ideologies, one that centers Palestinian memory and generously unpacks the underlying sociopolitical contexts of Palestinian society for non-Palestinian readers." --George Abraham, Public Books " You Exist Too Much gets desire at a deep level: where it comes from, how it pushes and tugs, and how it's virtually never just about who it's about. As the narrator pinballs from one disastrous affair to the next, we get more than the chronicle of a young full-blown love addict, but a keen study in how our wants are bound to place, race, gender, religion, psychology, and family. Zaina Arafat speaks for the persistently hungry." Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens "What a breath of fresh air! Zaina Arafat takes a familiar figurethe restless, womanizing narrator of many a canonical noveland reimagines it to mordant and delightful effect. Her queer, Palestinian American, love-addict protagonist is pining mostly for a sense of belonging and purpose. She's a deeply relatable character who beautifully conveys the anguish of trying to figure out a life between categories of various kinds. You Exist Too Much is a moving, irreverent, darkly entertaining novel about the agony of family, the mysteries of romantic love, and the painful work of learning where we stop and others begin. Arafat is a true original." Nina Renata Aron, author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls, Praise for You Exist Too Much " You Exist Too Much gets desire at a deep level: where it comes from, how it pushes and tugs, and how it's virtually never just about who it's about. As the narrator pinballs from one disastrous affair to the next, we get more than the chronicle of a young full-blown love addict, but a keen study in how our wants are bound to place, race, gender, religion, psychology, and family. Zaina Arafat speaks for the persistently hungry." --Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens "What a breath of fresh air! Zaina Arafat takes a familiar figure--the restless, womanizing narrator of many a canonical novel--and reimagines it to mordant and delightful effect. Her queer, Palestinian American, love-addict protagonist is pining mostly for a sense of belonging and purpose. She's a deeply relatable character who beautifully conveys the anguish of trying to figure out a life between categories of various kinds. You Exist Too Much is a moving, irreverent, darkly entertaining novel about the agony of family, the mysteries of romantic love, and the painful work of learning where we stop and others begin. Arafat is a true original." --Nina Renata Aron, author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls, Praise for You Exist Too Much "[A] provocative and seductive debut . . . Novels like these don't exist enough." -- O, The Oprah Magazine , 1 of 31 LGBTQ Books That'll Change the Literary Landscape This Year " You Exist Too Much gets desire at a deep level: where it comes from, how it pushes and tugs, and how it's virtually never just about who it's about. As the narrator pinballs from one disastrous affair to the next, we get more than the chronicle of a young full-blown love addict, but a keen study in how our wants are bound to place, race, gender, religion, psychology, and family. Zaina Arafat speaks for the persistently hungry." --Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens "Zaina Arafat has dreamed up a narrator who claws herself off the page in her aliveness, ripped between an insurmountable urge to chase desire and a longing for stability, cultural and familial acceptance, and lasting love. The result is an aching, deeply humane bildungsroman that superbly examines the gap between what we have and what we want. Arafat's narrator is propelled by a need to consume other people and know them deeply in attempts to satisfy a bottomless well of thirst. Reading You Exist Too Much will make you want to exist right beside its writer, learning from its stories forever." --Kristen Radtke, author of Imagine Wanting Only This "What a breath of fresh air! Zaina Arafat takes a familiar figure--the restless, womanizing narrator of many a canonical novel--and reimagines it to mordant and delightful effect. Her queer, Palestinian American, love-addict protagonist is pining mostly for a sense of belonging and purpose. She's a deeply relatable character who beautifully conveys the anguish of trying to figure out a life between categories of various kinds. You Exist Too Much is a moving, irreverent, darkly entertaining novel about the agony of family, the mysteries of romantic love, and the painful work of learning where we stop and others begin. Arafat is a true original." --Nina Renata Aron, author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls, Praise for You Exist Too Much BuzzFeed , 1 of 83 Books to Keep on your Radar This Year "[A] provocative and seductive debut . . . Novels like these don't exist enough." -- O, The Oprah Magazine , 1 of 31 LGBTQ Books That'll Change the Literary Landscape This Year "A bildungsroman of desire, shame, and addiction." -- Electric Literature , 1 of 56 Books by Women & Nonbinary Writers of Color to Read This Year "Told with sympathy and what seems like some irony, You Exist Too Much intrigues me for its multiculturalism and dissection of the notion that romantic love can be an all-bearing measure of personal fulfillment." --Eleni Theodoropoulos, Literary Hub , One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year "A novel of self-discovery following a Palestinian-American girl as she navigates queerness, love addiction, and a series of tumultuous relationships." -- The Millions , One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year " You Exist Too Much gets desire at a deep level: where it comes from, how it pushes and tugs, and how it's virtually never just about who it's about. As the narrator pinballs from one disastrous affair to the next, we get more than the chronicle of a young full-blown love addict, but a keen study in how our wants are bound to place, race, gender, religion, psychology, and family. Zaina Arafat speaks for the persistently hungry." --Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens "Zaina Arafat has dreamed up a narrator who claws herself off the page in her aliveness, ripped between an insurmountable urge to chase desire and a longing for stability, cultural and familial acceptance, and lasting love. The result is an aching, deeply humane bildungsroman that superbly examines the gap between what we have and what we want. Arafat's narrator is propelled by a need to consume other people and know them deeply in attempts to satisfy a bottomless well of thirst. Reading You Exist Too Much will make you want to exist right beside its writer, learning from its stories forever." --Kristen Radtke, author of Imagine Wanting Only This "What a breath of fresh air! Zaina Arafat takes a familiar figure--the restless, womanizing narrator of many a canonical novel--and reimagines it to mordant and delightful effect. Her queer, Palestinian American, love-addict protagonist is pining mostly for a sense of belonging and purpose. She's a deeply relatable character who beautifully conveys the anguish of trying to figure out a life between categories of various kinds. You Exist Too Much is a moving, irreverent, darkly entertaining novel about the agony of family, the mysteries of romantic love, and the painful work of learning where we stop and others begin. Arafat is a true original." --Nina Renata Aron, author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls, Praise for You Exist Too Much "[A] provocative and seductive debut . . . Novels like these don't exist enough." -- O, The Oprah Magazine , 1 of 31 LGBTQ Books That'll Change the Literary Landscape This Year " You Exist Too Much gets desire at a deep level: where it comes from, how it pushes and tugs, and how it's virtually never just about who it's about. As the narrator pinballs from one disastrous affair to the next, we get more than the chronicle of a young full-blown love addict, but a keen study in how our wants are bound to place, race, gender, religion, psychology, and family. Zaina Arafat speaks for the persistently hungry." --Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens "What a breath of fresh air! Zaina Arafat takes a familiar figure--the restless, womanizing narrator of many a canonical novel--and reimagines it to mordant and delightful effect. Her queer, Palestinian American, love-addict protagonist is pining mostly for a sense of belonging and purpose. She's a deeply relatable character who beautifully conveys the anguish of trying to figure out a life between categories of various kinds. You Exist Too Much is a moving, irreverent, darkly entertaining novel about the agony of family, the mysteries of romantic love, and the painful work of learning where we stop and others begin. Arafat is a true original." --Nina Renata Aron, author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls