How Should a Person Be?

April 30, 2012
With a quirky mixture of e-mails, transcribed conversations, and prose, frequent Believer contributor Heti (2004’s The Middle Stories) examines her titular question by emphasizing that, like life itself, the story of protagonist Sheila; her degenerate artist boyfriend, Israel; and her best friend, Margaux, doesn’t always make perfect sense. After she leaves her husband, Sheila—an aspiring Toronto playwright by night and hair salon employee by day—looks to her friends and the world at large to determine how to be. Acts divided into chapters interspersed with conversations transcribed to read like plays follow Sheila from home to New York to Atlantic City in her search for clarity. Autobiographical elements abound: like Heti’s metafictional protagonist, the author studied playwriting and lives in Toronto. Heti has an artist friend named Margaux with whom she has collaborated and to whom she dedicates this novel. 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. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic.