How Should a Person Be? : A Novel from Life

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013 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.