'It made me want to write' Sally Rooney
'A seriously strange but funny plunge into the quest for authenticity' Margaret Atwood
'A classic in the making' Stylist

Sheila's twenties were going to plan.

She got married.
She hosted parties.
A theatre asked her to write a play.

Then she realised that she didn't know how to write a play.
That her favourite part of the party was cleaning up after the party.
And that her marriage made her feel like she was banging into a brick wall.

So Sheila abandons her marriage and her play, befriends Margaux, a free and untortured painter, and begins sleeping with the dominating Israel, who's a genius at sex but not at art. She throws herself into recording them and everyone around her, investigating how they live, desperate to know, as she wanders, How Should a Person Be?

Using transcripts, real emails, plus heavy doses of fiction, Heti crafts an exciting, courageous, and mordantly funny tour through one woman's heart and mind.

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

Prizes

Short-listed for Encore Award 2014 (UK),Long-listed for Womens Prize for Fiction 2013 (UK)

Witty, unusual, raw...a powerful read...a classic in the making * Stylist *
Original...hilarious... Part confessional, part play, part novel, and more-it's one wild ride...Think HBO'S Girls in book form * Marie Claire *
Amazing -- Lena Dunham
A shamelessly funny read * Grazia *
Funny, bawdy and fiercely original * Easy Living *
A sharp and unsentimental chronicle of what it is like to be a 20-something now * Economist *
A book that risks everything... Complex, artfully messy, and hilarious -- Miranda July
Uniquely honest, funny and clever... Heti is superbly truthful and shockingly funny - no words were minced in the making of this strange, brilliant book -- Kate Saunders * The Times *
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 -- Olivia Laing * New Statesman *
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 -- David Shields, author of Reality Hunger

Sheila Heti is the author of ten books, including the novels Pure Colour, Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?, which New York magazine deemed one of the 'New Classics' of the twenty-first century and which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her novels have been translated into twenty-four languages. She lives in Toronto and Kawartha Lakes, Ontario.