How Should a Person Be?

Long-listed, ReLit Awards: Novel, 2011

Commended, Huffington Post Best Books, 2012

Commended, New York Times Notable Books, 2012

Long-listed, Women's Prize for Fiction, 2013

“Original, contemplative, and often tangential, this is an unorthodox compilation of colorful characters, friendship, and sex that provides an unusual answer to Heti’s question.” —Publishers Weekly

“Part confessional, part play, part novel, and more -- it's one wild ride. The upfront and unabashed sex makes for a voyeuristic, sometimes hilarious, read. Think HBO's Girls in book form.” —Marie Claire

“...a self-conscious, darkly funny exploration of the strained complexities of female friendship, the makings of bad art, and the finer points of awkward sex...[Heti] celebrates the extraordinary imperfection in ordinary life.” —The Georgia Straight

“...a portrait of the artist as a young woman, a postmodern self-help book and an autobiography of the mind.” —Vancouver Sun

“...an unforgettable book: intellectually exacting, unsettling in its fragility, bodily as anything painted by Freud, experimental yet crafted as hell, and yes, very funny.” —National Post

“...the good kind of genre muddle...How Should a Person Be? emerges as part of an entirely different genre: the realistic self-help book. You might not want to follow in Sheila's footsteps, but tagging along on her quixotic mission will be as useful as anything else you're likely to read this year.” —Vue

“Heti flails out in all directions, employing a winsome flexibility and an underlying sadness that deflates any pretension and focuses on the big questions of life. The exuberance of youth is shot through with magic threads of wisdom.” —Edmonton Journal

“From pithy quotables ('Night fell, but then, there are always holes to fall into,') to the oddly profound ('If now in some ways I drink too much, it's not that I lack a reverence for the world'), this is a novel that rewards reading, sitting with, and rereading.” —Quarterly Conversation

“This is a novel that abounds with [...] wisdom, arrived at in fresh and new ways. For all its inventiveness, there is an old-fashioned integrity, an attention to thought in the prose, resulting in unusual and sharp-eyed observations . . . we are treated to some truly profound ruminations on what it means to be an artist in our indifferent era.” —Literary Review of Canada

“... what Heti’s brain and fingertips offer are expanded possibilities for what the novel can be and can become ... How Should a Person Be? makes curious and combative company.” —Globe and Mail

“... one of the bravest, strangest, most original novels I’ve read this year.” —Boston Globe

“[Sheila Heti is] a brilliant, original thinker and an engaging writer.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“... vital and funny ...” —New Yorker

“[I'm] in awe of this new Toronto writer who seems to be channeling Henry Miller one minute and Joan Didion the next.” —NPR

“... boldly original ... [Heti] writes cinematically, but with the cockeyed emotional realism of filmmakers like Miranda July and Lena Dunham.” —NPR

“This is a novel that wonders if the ugly can be beautiful, if there is clarity to be found in the drifting.” —NPR

“How Should a Person Be? reveals a talented young voice of a still inchoate generation.” —Wall Street Journal

“... bound to be quoted over and over ... Sheila Heti does know something about how many of us, right now, experience the world, and she has gotten that knowledge down on paper, in a form unlike any other novel I can think of.” —New York Times

“... brilliant, forthright and sometimes very funny ...” —The National

“Sheila Heti's vaguely autobiographical new novel might make her the Joan Didion of the 'Girls' generation.” —Salon

“[Heti's] book has a freshness and verve that make you wonder where she will go next.” —Irish Times

“An engaging mashup of memoir, fiction and philosophy... It doesn't answer the question, how should a person be? But it does find an engaging new way of asking it.” —Guardian

“Heti does have a wicked sense of humour and some of her one-liners are genuinely laugh out loud.” —Daily Mail

“... a Joycean experiment ...” —Telegraph

“Heti is ... capable of arresting sentences that feel utterly now...” —UK Metro