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Gayle Forman is best known for her young adult books, especially her biggest best seller, If I Stay, which was made into a film. Leave Me is her first foray into the adult market, and I, and anyone else who reads it, will be very glad indeed.
Maribeth Klein is, I’m sorry to say, what we often think about when we think about 44-year-old working mothers. You know, the ones who have good jobs that force them to work more than 40 hours a week, and still keep up with all the household stuff like bills and shopping, and all the child care stuff. Not to disparage all those amazing husbands out there, my own included, who do half the parenting, we all know there are those who do not. And such is the case here.
Jason is a good husband and he helps out as best as he can. He’ll do whatever Maribeth asks of him, but she has to ask, and sometimes it is just easier to do it yourself. With pre-school age twins, it is particularly daunting. It is during a particularly stressful day that Maribeth suffers a heart attack; but she is so busy, and the symptoms for women are so different than they are for men, that it takes her about 24 hours to even notice. And even then, the only reason she ends up in the emergency room is because at her annual ob-gyn appointment, her blood pressure is really low, and they send her.
Under observation at the hospital, she learns she needs a stent, but due to complications ends up with a double bypass. We travel with Maribeth through this whole process, and it is engaging and emotional, especially for me. My husband had bypass surgery when he was 48 years old, so I was fascinated by this storyline plus it brought back a very painful time in my life.
After a week in the hospital, and a week at home, Maribeth’s family figures she is ready to take on everything again. And she tries, but she is exhausted. Truly exhausted down to the bone. Finally, she just snaps. She goes to the bank, withdraws a ton of cash, leaves her laptop and cellphone at home and takes off.
She ends up in Pittsburgh, where she was born. Maribeth was adopted and never really cared to find her birth mother. But the health issues changed that. She rents a small apartment, finds a local cardiologist who will take cash, and truly starts her recovery, part of which is finding her health history through her birth mother. And her relationship with her husband needs serious work, which in this case, is best done at a distance.
Forman has a real knack for creating characters that leap off the page and into life. This look at the leading killer of women, yes, more than breast cancer, is important. The exploration of a marriage is always interesting, and Forman does a really credible job here. This was a one night read for me, I couldn’t put it down. Don’t miss it.
Learn more about heart disease in women from Go Red for Women: “Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, causing 1 in 3 deaths each year. That’s approximately one woman every minute!”
9/16 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™
LEAVE ME by Gayle Forman. Algonquin Books (September 6, 2016). ISBN 978-1616206178. 352p.
Posted by Stacy Alesi 
Amor Towles was born and raised near Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale College and received an MA in English from Stanford University. For over twenty years he was an investment professional until he retired in 2013 in order to write full time. He lives with his wife and two children in Manhattan and serves on the boards of the Library of America, the Yale Art Gallery, and the Wallace Foundation.
udding throughout, but it was the the little pockets where the chopped chocolate had been mixed in that gave it its deliciousness. This recipe took the usual 34 grams of sugar down about a third, so still not that low but certainly better.
PHOEBE ROBINSON is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actress whom Vulture.com, Essence, and Esquire have named one of the top comedians to watch. She has appeared on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and Last Call with Carson Daly; Comedy Central’s Broad City, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and @midnight with Chris Hardwick; as well as TBS’s Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Robinson’s writing has been featured in The Village Voice and on Glamour.com, TheDailyBeast.com, VanityFair.com, Vulture.com, and NYTimes.com. She was also a staff writer on MTV’s hit talking head show, Girl Code, as well as a consultant on season three of Broad City. Most recently, she created and starred in Refinery29’s web series Woke Bae and, alongside Jessica Williams of The Daily Show, she is the creator and costar of the hit WNYC podcast 2 Dope Queens as well as the creator and host of the new WNYC podcast Sooo Many White Guys. Robinson lives and performs stand-up in Brooklyn, NY, and you can read her weekly musings about race, gender, and pop culture on her blog, Blaria.com (aka Black Daria).
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