Read Yes
Length 336
Overall Feels I feel seen
Gay Vibes all
Drink Pairing Triple Shot of Whisky
Trigger Warning(s) All of them
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Having read more books than I can count, Alana Saab’s Please Stop Trying to Leave Me is one of the most affecting, memorable, and concerningly relatable. A book I want to live in forever and simultaneously completely forget so I can read it for the first time all over again. Saab creates with an intention so few writers are capable of let alone take the time to curate. There is meaning in every font, punctuation, word, and allusion. Her writing and style have clearly been honed into one of the most unique voices in story telling today.
Please Stop Trying to Leave Me explores the highs, lows, difficulties, success, regression and more of healing and living with mental health issues through Norma’s 27 year old, privileged, queer, female perspective. Diagnosed by her therapist with major depressive disorder, anxiety, and derealisation/depersonalization disorder, the narrative follows eight months of her life and an in-progress manuscript as she heals, tries, fails, learns, and explores an “oblivion” that has plagued her entire life.
Complex. There is darkness and humor, hope and nihilism, science and magic, art and evidence. Saab shows off an extensive understanding and a cross-disciplinary approach to all of life’s journeys, finding meaning, an explanation, or just humor anywhere possible. The narrative references academic studies, obscure literature, relativity, astrology, neurogenesis, psychology, and more. There were moments, I was wondering and occasionally hoping for a bibliography for further reading.
Not only does Please Stop Trying to Leave Me provide an entertaining and compelling narrative but also meaty, it would be a fascinating book for both literary and critical analysis. There are so many aspects to dive into. An obsession with definitions and google searches demonstrates Norma’s yearning and attempts at control through intellectualization as well as grounding herself in reality, facts, and google hits showing she’s not alone. The only name present for the first 140 pages, more than a third, is Norma’s. Her world belongs to her. She is isolated. The the girlfriend is a major character, she is referred to as girlfriend before becoming She with a capital S. After more than 200 pages, she is finally bestowed a name. Norma is so fearful of being abandoned, she emotionally distances for the majority of the book from the one person who doesn’t leave. The lack of “” makes it confusing, which blurs Norma’s reality to the reader leaving us a little confused on if it’s a thought, speech, conversation, in the past, present, etc. This is just a few of the many notes I made throughout reading. It’s exceptionally interesting from an artistic perspective. All culminating in an immersion in the novel.
Exploring a mental health journey through depression, PTSD, anxiety, Trauma, and more is a daunting feat. Saab tackled it with the grace and grit required. Combining scientific information—like an in-depth look at the long-term effects of gaslight on page 101—with the lived perspective of it is just a fucking quotidian slog that some get through and others do not. Every part of how the book is written speaks to the healing journey. Where this book could have been weighed down in the oppressive darkness that is Norma’s internal life, Saab has a deeply dark sense of humor.
As a reader, writer, critic, lesbian, and chronically mentally on the edge, it’s incredibly cool and rare to connect so fully and vividly to a piece of literature. My perspective, my stories are not often told as there are so few of us to tell the stories let alone willing. The rarest of all: capable of bringing an outsider into the experience of existing, loving, being loved, healing through all the intersections of being woman, queer, mental health disorders. For those who are not outsiders to this experience, though every journey is singular, Please Stop Trying to Leave Me says: “I see you. I do not judge you. You are welcome here.” With a Master’s in Psychology and a Master’s in Fine Arts, Saab is uniquely qualified to write about mental health as a journey and as a disorder. A stunning debut novel from an author I cannot wait to see where her journey takes her.
Memorable Quotes
“I’ve remembered it many times, so it may be tainted by improper consolidation. Stable yet false.” p. 30
“And shouldn’t literature be reflective of the society it’s writing to?” p. 50
“Writers rip themselves apart to put others back together.” p. 132
“Bras were, I thought, similar to a mental hospital: a wire-bordered cage with padding on the walls to make it bearable. Bras were either similar to a mental hospital or similar to life altogether. To be honest, it doesn’t matter. They’re the same thing.” p. 261
“In addition to that, when a person is exposed to repeated trauma, their system becomes hardwired for trauma. … These traumas make it hard for you to tolerate happiness as if something terrible can and will happen if you experience joy or comfort or any positive emotion.” p. 288
“I’ve come to realize I’m full of opinions and no action.” p. 297
“It wasn’t easy, but loving someone is loving the hard parts too.” p. 390
bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna
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Title: Please Stop Trying to Leave Me
Author: Alana Saab
Publisher: Vintage Books
Copyright: 2024
ISBN: 9780593686782
