Please Stop Trying to Leave Me

April 8, 2024
A lesbian woman grapples with her literary ambitions and deteriorating mental health in Saab’s engrossing debut. Norma, 27, believes she sees spiritual signs in Instagram ads about the value of “letting things go that no longer serve you,” which she interprets as messages from God that she should break up with her girlfriend. Her new therapist diagnoses her with a major depressive disorder and depersonalization and derealization disorder, the symptoms of which Norma calls her “oblivion.” The ensuing narrative forays into Norma’s tumultuous childhood, her past sexual relationships with men, and her uncertainty over whether to stay with her girlfriend. Saab achieves a sense of urgency in Norma’s stream-of-consciousness narration of her therapy sessions, and in her desire to finish her story collection after convincing an agent to take a look, but it’s sacrificed to the many pages of Norma’s rough-hewn manuscripts, which she submits to a creative writing class. Still, Saab deserves credit for her freewheeling accounts of her protagonist’s therapy sessions and for questioning what it means to heal. There’s promise in Saab’s affecting and singular exploration of a woman’s attempts to live and write with mental illness. Agent: Mina Hamedi, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.

May 15, 2024
After a mental health crisis, a young woman seeks treatment in an attempt to reinhabit the outside world, and herself, again. Norma is 27 years old, unhappy, anxious, desperate to break up with her girlfriend, and not totally convinced that the world around her is real. But what she really needs, she insists to her new therapist, is to finish her manuscript. Norma's refrain continues as she meets with her therapist twice a week, panicking about climate change, skewering famous billionaires, and occasionally revealing a glimpse of her childhood. Interspersed with their therapy sessions are Norma's stories, which she emphasizes are fiction. Although the stories are nearly identical to her life, this distinction is crucial to Norma. To Norma, life is a story, everyone is a character, and reality is a concept that cannot be defined by something as flimsy as genre. "When I was stuck in oblivion," she tells her therapist, "my head used the second person a lot. As if the author was whispering secrets to the character, and the author and the character had the same voice so it was hard to distinguish one from the other." As Norma navigates her relationship, her mental health crisis, and her manuscript, she works toward believing her therapist's words: "You Can Get Better." This portrait of mundanity is scattered with memento mori that plead to be noticed. There are times when Saab leans too heavily on her narrative devices, and the meta nods and storytelling stunts struggle to support the work as a whole. Still, Norma is acerbic, tenderhearted, and clever. The majority of the novel takes place in her mind, and it's as fascinating a setting as any other. A well-crafted spiral of a story with hope at its center.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from November 1, 2024
Saab's debut novel masterfully intertwines the complexities of modern life with a raw and intimate exploration of trauma, mental health, and queerness. The story centers on 27-year-old Norma, who struggles with mental health issues. Her therapist diagnoses her with major depressive disorder, but Norma insists she's afflicted by ""Oblivion,"" a fantastical state of dissociation she has lived in since childhood. As Norma tries to finish her lifelong manuscript with "The Last Story" and reconcile the pieces of her past and present, she uses storytelling to find some semblance of stability. Through Norma's unreliable narration, Saab delves into psychological struggles and the arduous journey toward healing and self-acceptance. She writes in a particularly striking stream of consciousness, capturing a feverish, dream-like state that aptly mirrors Norma's inner turmoil. While some chapters are beautifully poetic, others can be challenging to navigate, reflecting the skewed perceptions of life through the lens of mental health struggles. This portrayal is both authentic and resonant, highlighting Saab's skill in conveying the fragmented nature of memory and personal history. This humorous, chaotic, and heartrending debut brings readers right into Norma's mind and experiences with poignant clarity and lyrical, stream-of-consciousness prose.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.