-
You Exist Too Much
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Zehra Jane Naqvi
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: LGBTQ+, Literature & Fiction
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $17.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Crying in H Mart
- A Memoir
- By: Michelle Zauner
- Narrated by: Michelle Zauner
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian-American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
-
-
Broken Korean
- By Tim on 04-21-21
By: Michelle Zauner
-
Detransition, Baby
- A Novel
- By: Torrey Peters
- Narrated by: Renata Friedman
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.
-
-
Emotional Torture
- By Teh Micha on 04-27-21
By: Torrey Peters
-
Luster
- A Novel
- By: Raven Leilani
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edie is stumbling her way through her 20s - sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage - with rules.
-
-
Spellbinding
- By Nana on 08-07-20
By: Raven Leilani
-
Milk Fed
- By: Melissa Broder
- Narrated by: Melissa Broder
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rachel is 24, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control through obsessive food rituals while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting - until her therapist encourages her to take a 90-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting. Rachel soon meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her.
-
-
Funny and uncomfortable
- By Kayla on 04-01-21
By: Melissa Broder
-
The Thirty Names of Night
- A Novel
- By: Zeyn Joukhadar
- Narrated by: Samy Figaredo, Lameece Issaq
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the award-winning author of The Map of Salt and Stars, a new novel about three generations of Syrian Americans haunted by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts - a “vivid exploration of loss, art, queer and trans communities, and the persistence of history. Often tender, always engrossing, The Thirty Names of Night is a feat” (R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries).
-
-
Might be easier to follow in print
- By Kate on 12-30-20
By: Zeyn Joukhadar
-
The Vanishing Half
- A Novel
- By: Brit Bennett
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: Their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for White, and her White husband knows nothing of her past.
-
-
Soap opera material
- By Sheila S on 06-06-20
By: Brit Bennett
-
Crying in H Mart
- A Memoir
- By: Michelle Zauner
- Narrated by: Michelle Zauner
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian-American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
-
-
Broken Korean
- By Tim on 04-21-21
By: Michelle Zauner
-
Detransition, Baby
- A Novel
- By: Torrey Peters
- Narrated by: Renata Friedman
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.
-
-
Emotional Torture
- By Teh Micha on 04-27-21
By: Torrey Peters
-
Luster
- A Novel
- By: Raven Leilani
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edie is stumbling her way through her 20s - sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage - with rules.
-
-
Spellbinding
- By Nana on 08-07-20
By: Raven Leilani
-
Milk Fed
- By: Melissa Broder
- Narrated by: Melissa Broder
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rachel is 24, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control through obsessive food rituals while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting - until her therapist encourages her to take a 90-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting. Rachel soon meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her.
-
-
Funny and uncomfortable
- By Kayla on 04-01-21
By: Melissa Broder
-
The Thirty Names of Night
- A Novel
- By: Zeyn Joukhadar
- Narrated by: Samy Figaredo, Lameece Issaq
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the award-winning author of The Map of Salt and Stars, a new novel about three generations of Syrian Americans haunted by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts - a “vivid exploration of loss, art, queer and trans communities, and the persistence of history. Often tender, always engrossing, The Thirty Names of Night is a feat” (R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries).
-
-
Might be easier to follow in print
- By Kate on 12-30-20
By: Zeyn Joukhadar
-
The Vanishing Half
- A Novel
- By: Brit Bennett
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: Their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for White, and her White husband knows nothing of her past.
-
-
Soap opera material
- By Sheila S on 06-06-20
By: Brit Bennett
-
Time Is a Mother
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: Ocean Vuong
- Length: 1 hr and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America.
-
-
O...My God
- By hynek on 04-09-22
By: Ocean Vuong
-
We Have Always Been Here
- A Queer Muslim Memoir
- By: Samra Habib
- Narrated by: Parmida Vand
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Samra Habib has spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself. As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, she faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From her parents, she internalized the lesson that revealing her identity could put her in grave danger. When her family came to Canada as refugees, Samra encountered a whole new host of challenges: Bullies, racism, the threat of poverty, and an arranged marriage.
-
-
Wow.
- By Lannah E. on 05-19-21
By: Samra Habib
-
In the Dream House
- A Memoir
- By: Carmen Maria Machado
- Narrated by: Carmen Maria Machado
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope - the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman....
-
-
Devastatingly Beautiful
- By SeattleBookLover on 02-04-20
-
The Death of Vivek Oji
- A Novel
- By: Akwaeke Emezi
- Narrated by: Yetide Badaki, Chukwudi Iwuji
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One afternoon, in a town in Southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son's body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family’s struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings.
-
-
an emotional story
- By Barbara S on 08-22-20
By: Akwaeke Emezi
-
Transcendent Kingdom
- A Novel
- By: Yaa Gyasi
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.
-
-
Would have benefited from a different narrator
- By Richard Stewart on 09-11-20
By: Yaa Gyasi
-
The Wives
- By: Tarryn Fisher
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was supposed to be easy. Thursday would share her husband, Seth, with his other two wives, Monday and Tuesday - two women she’s never met and knows nothing about. No questions asked, no hurt feelings. And for a while, the arrangement works...until Thursday finds a scrap of paper with a name - Monday’s real name - and an address. Now Thursday can’t stop herself. She wants to know more about this woman: who she is, what she’s like...what Seth sees in her that Thursday doesn’t have.
-
-
Awful.
- By Krwobbe on 01-28-20
By: Tarryn Fisher
-
A Woman Is No Man
- A Novel
- By: Etaf Rum
- Narrated by: Ariana Delawari, Dahlia Salem, Susan Nezami
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three generations of Palestinian-American women living in Brooklyn are torn between individual desire and the strict mores of Arab culture in this powerful debut - a heart-wrenching story of love, intrigue, courage, and betrayal that will resonate with women from all backgrounds, giving voice to the silenced and agency to the oppressed.
-
-
Powerful and Terrifying
- By Emmst51 on 05-04-19
By: Etaf Rum
-
The Chosen and the Beautiful
- By: Nghi Vo
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society - she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.
-
-
Ignore the Boring Brigade
- By Jo on 09-28-21
By: Nghi Vo
-
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
-
-
You haven't heard this story before.
- By Ms. Lisa on 04-23-19
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
-
A Burning
- A Novel
- By: Megha Majumdar
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam, Priya Ayyar, Deepti Gupta, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely — an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor — has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.
-
-
Heartbreaking and Brilliantly Performed
- By David P on 07-28-20
By: Megha Majumdar
-
Wahala
- A Novel
- By: Nikki May
- Narrated by: Natalie Simpson
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An incisive and exhilarating debut novel following three Anglo-Nigerian best friends and the lethally glamorous fourth woman who infiltrates their group—the most unforgettable girls since Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha.
-
-
WOW!
- By Sarah Gomez on 01-12-22
By: Nikki May
-
All My Mother's Lovers
- A Novel
- By: Ilana Masad
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman, Ilana Masad
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Intimacy has always eluded 27-year-old Maggie Krause - despite being brought up by married parents, models of domestic bliss - until, that is, Lucia came into her life. But when Maggie’s mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris' will, five sealed envelopes, each addressed to a mysterious man she’s never heard of. In an effort to run from her own grief and discover the truth about Iris - who made no secret of her discomfort with her daughter's sexuality - Maggie embarks on a road trip.
-
-
Decidedly queer and not gimmicky
- By OwlLover on 06-26-20
By: Ilana Masad
Publisher's Summary
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 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 from the same
What listeners say about You Exist Too Much
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- K. Tannous
- 09-11-20
Narrator is distractingly bad
What could have been a wonderful book to get lost in turned into a painful slog because of a really poor narrating job. The narrator uses a quasi-Indian accent for Arabic speakers throughout the book, mispronounces Arabic words like Ramallah and teta. Other accents are equally bad—noticeably French and Spanish. It was appallingly bad, and I feel very sorry for the author of this book. This audio recording massacres her work. Is it possible to re-record with a more competent narrator? Haram.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amanne
- 07-20-20
Great story, horrible narrator
I highly recommend reading this beautiful book. While I’m not queer there was a lot I could relate to as a Palestinian-America.
Unfortunately the publisher picked a horrible narrator. The narrator’s Arabic accent is horrific and nowhere near an actual Arabic accent. At times it sounded like a bad Eastern European accent.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Nicole Feleo
- 08-07-20
Relatable, rich story
This story is so fresh and realistic in its telling. The way the author writes the protagonist allows for a very long and nuanced look at a lived life – the many parts that make someone who they are as they grow. In real life, as in the story, the protagonist sees different setbacks and falls into old patterns. Meanwhile, so many traumatic instances from childhood and different past failures that inform current ones are being told.
My own lived experience with my mother was eerily similar to the fictional protagonists’. There was abuse that echoed my own very closely. I am a fairly privileged Southeast Asian woman who has always been heterosexual. Even so, in many ways, I identified with the protagonist consistently. In my own mistakes, in my journey, my relationships, etc.
While the character is frustratingly flawed, there are so many potential moments for redemption and hope. There is, in the end, that satisfying possibility as well. I enjoyed listening to this story, though I will agree that the narrator’s voice and accents were off-putting. The protagonist herself has moments where she makes incredible and horrific mistakes. Her mistakes, however, do not obscure her potential for redemption.
One other thing to address: I am glad to see a book that has nuance about first generation American citizens with immigrant parents. While there are many books out there that will gladly villainize Islamic and Arab culture, I am glad to see this was not one of them. While it is a part of her experience, it is not depicted as evil, monolithic, etc. The Middle East tends to be alluded to as a backwards place in a lot of places, but this book focuses on her individual experiences and proves that nuance matters.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- JL
- 11-03-20
Meh - didn't care about the character in the end
I didn't even finish this book - I think I'm about 30 min away from the end. I just lost interest in the deeply flawed character and her endless broken relationships. It just feels like reading someone's personal journal and is not that interesting to an outsider. Maybe I don't identify with the way the character views love? Didn't mind the narrator as others did.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- OwlLover
- 09-09-20
Interesting, but disjointed and hard to follow
This is a tremendously flawed and troubled character, and it is easy to understand how she has come to be as she is. This is not so much novel, or even short stories, so much as a piecing together. There are times that it is quite disjointed. There is no signal that the narrator is taking us elsewhere. She swings from one moment to the next and back again, and it can be disorienting. It feels like it could have been organized better. It is also tricky to follow the voice of the narrator because, at first she uses a more baby-like voice for secondary characters, but starts slipping into it with the main character, so it takes a while to figure out who is speaking. It may be easier to read than listen to.