Author: Gayle Forman
ISBN: 9781471156786
RRP: $29.99
Gayle Forman is a well known author of Young Adult novels, and with Leave Me she has branched out and offers us her first adult novel. I thought I had a couple of her YA titles on my shelf but perhaps not.
Leave Me is a great introduction to her work and it is a completely relatable novel for anyone who has a partner and children, anyone trying to find a work/life balance.
Maribeth Klein is the mother of four year old twins, a wife and an editor at a women’s magazine working with her best friend. She is run off her feet at work and at home and with everything going on she manages to shrug off the symptoms of a heart attack, only discovering it when at a completely unrelated doctors appointment. This heart incident sets in motion a chain of events resulting in Maribeth running away from home.
I don’t have four year old twins and I haven’t had a heart attack but I can definitely relate to the desire to run away from home. There are certainly days where it all seems way too hard, days where it seems wife and mother are synonymous with cook and cleaner. If I feel like this perfectly healthy I can only imagine how strong that desire could get if you were recovering from major surgery and were still expected to do all of the household duties.
Maribeth withdraws a large amount of cash and walks away with a small suitcase, leaving behind her laptop, cell phone and a note. She heads to the station and gets on a train, all trying to ensure she doesn’t leave a trail.
I can’t imagine actually leaving my family, what a traumatic decision that must have been. It’s one thing to sometimes think how nice if would be to disappear from the responsibility but a totally different thing to actually plan and do it.
The story follows Maribeth, soon to be known as M.B. Goldman, as she starts fresh somewhere that she can start healing; her mind, her heart and her body. It seems living off the grid and under the radar is a little more difficult than Maribeth expected, in a world of paperwork and paper trails paying with cash is looked on with suspicion.
Maribeth has the time to sit back and take stock of her life, and face up to things she’s been hiding from herself.
Leave Me is a touching story of heartbreak and love that brings together an interesting range of different characters and relationship dynamics to explore the inner conflicts we all face and the different ways they can be approached to find the strength to move on.
There is a lot to be said for Leave Me and the way it addresses relationships of all types, and the way they evolve but also the maintenance they require so they don’t start being taken for granted.
We discover there is a lot more to Maribeth than we would have first thought, and issues even she wasn’t sure she had come to light throughout the story.
She has walked out on her husband and her children but throughout the story we realise that this book is as much about friendship as it is about her marriage and her health.
Maribeth was a character that I sympathised with at times, but also couldn’t understand some of her actions. She was certainly believable and relatable.
I think Leave Me will be a satisfying read for women of all ages.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster 25 of our Beauty and Lace Club members will be reading Leave Me so please be aware there may be spoilers in the comments below. I look forward to hearing what they think.
Leave Me is available now through Simon & Schuster, Angus & Robertson Bookworld, Booktopia and where all good books are sold.
Gayle Forman can be found on Facebook, Twitter and her Website.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!
I loved this book. I could totally relate to MBs character and her family in the story were not as prominent as her but still so so important to the storyline. found the book very easy to read and i love gaylea style of writing..
i found it came to and end pretty quickly and would have love a bit more detail but overall i just adored this book and its characters
Thanks for the opportunity to review this book.
I found it to be a good easy read with an interesting concept that I would think many wives & mothers have thought of sometime just to escape from the burden of responsibilities & family.
I know I have but she did it!
Good strong lead character but found others faded into the background great storyline but disappointed in the ending.
Still enjoyed Leave Me & will inform friends that it is a great read & seemingly life like in some ways.
It’s interesting that in her debut novel specifically written for adults, award-winning Young Adult author Gayle Forman has picked such a mature and relatable topic. Leave Me is the story of an over-stressed, over-worked and under-appreciated mother of four-year-old twins who is forced to stop and re-evaluate her life. It’s a book that is easy-to-read and is likely to strike a chord with audiences who can see a little something of themselves in the main protagonist, even if they don’t always agree with her actions.
Maribeth Klein is a woman in her mid-40s. She is stuck in the rat race and continues going about her hectic schedule while ignoring the pains in her chest. This eventually develops into a full-blown heart attack and Klein subsequently requires emergency bypass surgery. Her mother flies in to join the family and assist with her recuperation. But instead of concentrating on her respite at home, Klein decides to pack her bags and run away/abandon her family.
This story is a very engaging one, particularly at the beginning where it is easy to relate to Klein’s role as a busy Mum working at a glossy magazine. She is a brave woman but she’s not always the most likeable or logical character. There will be some readers who will fail to understand how she could just get up and leave. Klein does embark on a journey of discovery of sorts thanks to spending time with her new young neighbours and having a flirtatious relationship with an older cardiologist. These supporting characters could have been a little more developed.
Leave Me is an interesting book about love, success, failure, dislocation, regret, fear and redemption. There is a little something we can all take away from this book, even if we don’t always agree with things or if we’re left a little dissatisfied with the questions left unanswered at the end. In all, this is one swift read that readers can connect with because at the end of the day this story is simply just a sign of the times.
Thank you so much Beauty and Lace and Simon and Schuster for the opportunity to read Leave Me written by author Gayle Forman.
This was the first book I have read since becoming mum to baby number two and I found it to capture me quickly, was a great flowing read and with a great short chapter structure for mums with short reading ‘Windows’.
I really enjoyed the evolution of Maribeth’s character and at times found im her confrontingly familiar. Many times throughout the novel I found myself considering how I would react or behave in similar circumstances.
Readers who enjoy author’s such as Jodi Picoult and Jojo Moyes would also favour Forman’s writing. I am now extremely interested to explore her young adult novels and will keep my eye out for any future writing.
Thanks again
Megan
Thank you for the opportunity to read Leave Me by Gayle Forman.
It is the story of Maribeth Klein who is a busy working mother who unexpectedly has a heart attack. Once she is out of hospital everyone around her thinks it is back to normal, whereas for her things have definitely changed.
One day when it all becomes too much she leaves her family. I enjoyed this process as I think we may all have fleetingly wanted to do this every now and then. I imagine it would have been hard to go without contact with her family and friends for so long. I liked the connections she made though, and these were written well.
When she finally made contact with her husband I felt it went a bit easier than for most and some of her relationships at home were not explored enough. The ending was also quite swift.
Having said that I enjoyed the book and the theme, and would really recommend it as a book to get you thinking.
Maribeth has it all, husband, children, and a career working with her best friend, until an inconvenient heart attack turns her world upside down. Maribeth’s family is used to her being in control, and doing it all, and they don’t quite seem to understand that when she comes home from the hospital after open heart surgery she hasn’t just snapped back to being the person she was. So Maribeth does, what to her at the time seems to be the logical thing, she runs away from home!
She leaves a note for her husband, withdraws $25,000 in cash, leaves behind her phone, identification and laptop, and with a small suitcase in hand walks away.
Ironically she arrives in Pittsburgh, the place of her birth before she was adopted out as a small baby. Here she takes on her adopted mother’s maiden name, reinvents herself as M B Goldman and discovers the difficulties of trying to pay cash and not provide appropriate identification – particularly difficult when you need the services of a cardiologist!
Eventually Maribeth finds lodging, and a cardiologist who will monitor her with no questions asked and so begins the process of healing, not just the physical aspects of major surgery but the emotional aspects of her life, including much that she has blocked away as unimportant.
I found this book to be a very easy read, finishing it in one sitting. The characters were interesting and the book drew me in emotionally. While the story concentrated on Maribeth I liked the way Forman “grew” the additional characters, without having them detract from the central story line.
I would certainly recommend this book, thank you to Beauty and Lace for allowing me the opportunity to review it.
Just finished reading this about 20min ago . Wasn’t sure if I would enjoy this and it’s not my normal reading material . All in all I really liked it , Disappointed in the ending though . Not how I thought it would end . Interesting storyline , not sure I could do what Maribeth did although I’ve often thought about it . Thank you Beauty and Lace for allowing me to review this , I’ll be passing it on to another book loving friend to read .
Leave Me by Gayle Forman was an interesting book. It flowed easily and certain parts I could relate to. Maribeth, the main character has her life turned upside down by a heart attack. Leaving behind her children and life, seems to her, the only way she can heal. Leave me ends to abruptly for my liking. To many unanswered questions. Maybe this is intentional for a following book?
When the opportunity to review this book came up I was quick to respond with a positive. I hadnt read any of Gayle Formans previous books but reading the short preview of ‘Leave Me’ was enough to make me want to read this one.
As I started reading ‘Leave Me’ I found I was sitting and nodding and amazed at the similarities between Maribeth and a friend of mine who had suffered a heart attack just 4 weeks before and was battling to get it across to their family that this was serious. Oddly some people seem to think you can just carry on as normal and they dont understand that this heart attack and the fact you survived means you were given a warning shot across the bow and you either listen and make big changes in your life or you carry on as is and start heading towards your next heart attack where this time you may not make it home again.
Just as Maribeth did my friend had classic symptoms but where Maribeth wasnt aware she was having a heart attack my friend did as they had suffered a small heart attack 16years earlier. This one was different and like with Maribeth it caused damage to the heart. Maribeth has 4year old twins but my friend has grown twins, a boy and a girl and they both have their own families. Maribeths Mother and husband just dont seem to get that to start with Maribeth needs looking after and she cant do what she did before. My friend was still in hospital when their daughter was asking if they would drive her son to his football game that weekend.
Once Maribeth was out of hospital she returned home to bare cupboards and a poor food selection for someone who has just had a very strong warning that things must change. No one thought I head out and get supplies in for her or to make sure she had meals. She was expected to get straight back into the normal care of the children which was much the same as my friend who was expected to run around from morning until late at night to drive his daughter and her children all over the countryside. My friend even faced a tantrum form their daughter when they were told that they couldnt go out that night to pick her son up from football. My friend gave in and picked her son up but the tantrum that I witnessed was amazing and it was that which made my friend decide that in time they will move far away from their family. Dealing with the selfishness of people that are supposed to love you and want to look after you is shocking and a real eye opener. Just as Maribeth found that for her own preservation she must run away my friend as decided the same thing but in a slightly different way. Sometimes when you see very clearly that people are just not understanding that you are important too, well,,,thats when you have to make sure that you start looking after you and placing yourself first.
I understood where Maribeth was coming from and I know that she did what she did as an act of self preservation. She knew her children would be looked after and she knew if she didnt get away she was looking at perhaps being removed from this earth.
I loved reading this book and read sections of it out loud to my friend who kept saying ” Oh I know that one” …Im going to visit my friend in a few weeks and I am taking my copy of this book so they can read it. I think if you have ever felt overwhelmed and unappreciated then you will feel Maribeths pain.
I really enjoyed this book and will certainly look out for more of Gayles works.
I felt for Maribeth, trying to run the household while recovering from a heart attack, and her husband and mother what a horrible character she was and did nothing doing to help. I felt the frustration, and when she left it was a mixture of surprise yet jubilation. of all the characters you got to know her the most and probably her husband as you read on the others Sunny, Todd, Stephen, Janice just seem like add in-characters who you get to know a small piece of there life but they could have more to offer but the character she was trying to find, which I thought where the story was leading up to meeting, didn’t get too much of a resolution. I guess Maribeth came to the retaliation she was always loved, but it went nowhere.
Dealing with the selfishness of people that are supposed to love you and want to look after you is shocking and a real eye opener.