How Should a Person Be?

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013 Reeling from a failed marriage, Sheila, a twentysomething playwright, finds herself unsure of how to live and create. When Margaux, a talented painter and free spirit, and Israel, a sexy and depraved artist, enter her life, Sheila hopes that through close—sometimes too close—observation of her new friend, her new lover, and herself, she might regain her footing in art and life. Using transcribed conversations, real emails, plus heavy doses of fiction, the brilliant and always innovative Sheila Heti crafts a work that is part literary novel, part self-help manual, and part bawdy confessional. It's a totally shameless and dynamic exploration into the way we live now, which breathes fresh wisdom into the eternal questions: What is the sincerest way to love? What kind of person should you be?

About the Author :
Sheila Heti is the author of several books of fiction, including The Middle Stories and Ticknor, and a book of "conversational philosophy" called The Chairs Are Where the People Go, written with Misha Glouberman, which was chosen by The New Yorker as a best book of 2011. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Bookforum, McSweeney's, n+1, The Guardian, and other places. She works as interviews editor at The Believer magazine and lives in Toronto.

Review :
Helen Fielding made it funny and fictional in Bridget Jones's Diary; Elizabeth Gilbert did it without laughs in Eat, Pray, Love. Now in this mashup of memoir, fiction, self-help and philosophy, Sheila Heti has added a bit of a story, quite a few blow jobs and some cheeky exclamation marks, and finally made it credible A really amazing metafiction-meets-nonfiction novel A beguiling "novel from life" about creativity and authenticity Funny, bawdy and fiercely original, this is the book everyone's talking about - and for good reason A shamelessly funny read that’s got all of America talking Part of a growing movement to explore the messiness, self-consciousness and doubt of young women who have been told the world offers them unprecedented opportunity, and who are discovering just what that means It will be one of the most talked-about books of 2013 Original...hilarious... Part confessional, part play, part novel, and more—it’s one wild ride...Think HBO’S Girls in book form Utterly beguiling: blunt, charming, funny, and smart. Heti subtly weaves together ideas about sex, femininity and artistic ambition. Reading this genre-defying book was pure pleasure Heti is taking a hard look at what makes life meaningful and how one doesn’t end up loveless and lost. It is book peopled by twentysomethings but works easily as a manual for anyone who happens to have run into a spiritual wall Sheila Heti’s vaguely autobiographical new novel might make her the Joan Didion of the “Girls” generation It's a bawdy, idiosyncratic novel about art, sex, Toronto, female friendship and the endless quest to learn how to live. The title makes me quake with envy. All good books should be called just that... What’s compelling about the book is certainly its raw interrogation of the process of creating both a work of art and an artist's personality How Should a Person Be? is a question to be revisited by the author herself, or another writer, or many other writers – but it’s also the question novels were invented to respond to… Sheila makes it ugly to clear a space: for novels to be less fictional, for women to dream of being geniuses, for a way of being 'honest and transparent and give away nothing' Genuinely laugh out loud Utterly now A sharp and unsentimental chronicle of what it is like to be a 20-something now…Heti’s mordant take on modernity encourages introspection. It is easy to see why a book on the anxiety of celebrity has turned the author into one herself Joyously self-conscious…profoundly ironic…or, perhaps more accurately, it is a production profoundly concerned with how to live authentically in a world saturated by irony She’s at her best when she turns outwards to faux-innocent criticisms of the creative and slightly self-regarding circles she moves in… Read this for the jolt between reality and fiction and as an attempt at mapping the complicated emotional terrain best friendships can be Ambitious, assured and ruthlessly controlled…exhilarating Witty, unusual, raw…a powerful read…a classic in the making. Its montage of thoughts and emotions, written in the fearlessly true voice of its author, lend the book an unmistakable honesty and make it a truly original memoir as well as a great novel in its own right An unconventional blur of fact and fiction, How Should a Person Be? is an engaging cocktail of memoir, novel and self-help guide A candid collection of taped interviews and emails, random notes and daring exposition…fascinating Terribly compelling Occasionally magical…this is an undeniably strange and unique book Genuinely provocative, funny and original A serious work about authenticity, how to lead a moral life and accept one’s own ugliness An exuberantly productive mess, filtered and reorganised after the fact…rather than working within a familiar structure, Heti has gone out to look for things that interest her and “put a fence around” whatever she finds We may suspect this is barely fictionalised autobiography and we may well be right, but it's very witty barely fictionalised biography A sharp, witty exploration of relationships, art and celebrity culture