Scan barcode
sashabaker177's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
It is clearly well-written, but it is self-consciously an exercise in pointlessness and was never able to overcome that sufficiently for me to take an interest in its meditations on art, though the resolution to the ugly painting story did tie it together quite nicely. I was at times compelled by its exploration of female friendship, but found its portrayal of sexual and gender relations frequently to be reductive. I think this book has been praised for its authentic portrayal of a female experience. I'm sure that some women find it to be such, but I found it frustrating and lazily stereotypical at times, lionising the masculine and denigrating the feminine often uncritically. Inhabiting the main character's head occasionally aroused a kind of morbid curiousity, but more often than not it felt like spending time with someone whose writing was stronger than their thinking.
vilmis's review against another edition
Kiva ja hauska luku! Musta tuntuu, että tää kirja on aika polarisoiva.
mmaier40's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Great second half, okay first half. Wasted time on the intro of the characters, the philosophy is the best part.
fcty's review against another edition
just not for me rn. i actually really liked how frank she was about sex and her desire but the guy being called isr*el ruined it for me… she should have chosen a different name lol
jb4nay's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
A valid, loose memoir pretending to make some deep explanation of the human condition. Every now and then, it would make a point at the end of a chapter. But the majority of the book served no purpose
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
amjammi's review against another edition
2.0
Shelia: How can these artists we read about -- who have been married five or six times -- how can they have enough time for all that life and also make art?
Margaux: And have a heroin addiction?
Margaux: And have a heroin addiction?
mtomchek's review against another edition
4.0
"We don't know the effects we have on each other, but we have them."
"For so long I had been looking hard into every person I met, hoping I might discover in them all the thoughts and feelings I hoped life would give me, but hadn't. There are some people who say you have to find such things in yourself, that you cannot count on anyone to supply even the smallest crumb that your life lacks. Although I knew this might be true, it didn't prevent me from looking anyway. Who cares what people say? What people say has no effect on your heart."
"But life isn't only where things are exciting; it's where things feel hard and stagnant, too."
"In their quest for a life without failure, suffering, or doubt, that is what they achieve: a life empty of all those things that make a human life meaningful. And yet they started off believing themselves too special for this world!"
Whew...this was an adventure. Sheila Heti is definitely a unique author, with a skill different from many of this time. She taps into some existential realm of the mind, and the reader follows her along this path. Asking the question, "how should a person be?" It was a crazy journey, reading this book, and I loved some parts, felt lost/confused in others. But perhaps that is how the mind is.
I loved the friendship being explored in this novel, I related to Sheila, the main character, at times, and empathized. She was navigating the sea of understanding people, something many in this world do not do. Such an intricately amazing book. Weird, but deep. Brilliant.
"For so long I had been looking hard into every person I met, hoping I might discover in them all the thoughts and feelings I hoped life would give me, but hadn't. There are some people who say you have to find such things in yourself, that you cannot count on anyone to supply even the smallest crumb that your life lacks. Although I knew this might be true, it didn't prevent me from looking anyway. Who cares what people say? What people say has no effect on your heart."
"But life isn't only where things are exciting; it's where things feel hard and stagnant, too."
"In their quest for a life without failure, suffering, or doubt, that is what they achieve: a life empty of all those things that make a human life meaningful. And yet they started off believing themselves too special for this world!"
Whew...this was an adventure. Sheila Heti is definitely a unique author, with a skill different from many of this time. She taps into some existential realm of the mind, and the reader follows her along this path. Asking the question, "how should a person be?" It was a crazy journey, reading this book, and I loved some parts, felt lost/confused in others. But perhaps that is how the mind is.
I loved the friendship being explored in this novel, I related to Sheila, the main character, at times, and empathized. She was navigating the sea of understanding people, something many in this world do not do. Such an intricately amazing book. Weird, but deep. Brilliant.
bodilessentity's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
How are you in your late 20s and you're still asking how a person should be? Grow up and develop your own identity!!
In all seriousness, I have been asking myself the same question as Sheila, the narrator of How Should a Person Be?. I turned 27 a few months ago. As I approach my 30s, I am thinking more intentionally about my habits, my relationships, my career, and my artmaking practice. This is complicated by the fact that almost every morning, I wake up to a headline about violence, climate catastrophe, disease, inequity, or some combination of the above. It's tempting to fall into the trap of despair and disengagement, but I remember that I at least have the individual agency to bear witness, to use art as a liberatory space, and to retain my sense of humor through it all. With these as some of my guiding beliefs, I make decisions that I hope will result in the person that I would like to become, the life that I want to live, and the art that I want to make.
I say this not to judge the narrator according to the principles by which I live my life, but to explain why her neurotic ruminations over how a person should be strike me as especially trivial. She muses noncommittally at the start of the novel about her desire for fame: “I don’t want anything to change, except to be as famous as one can be, but without that changing anything. Everyone would know in their hearts that I am the most famous person alive—but not talk about it too much. And for no one to be too interested in taking my picture, for they’d all carry around in their heads an image of me that was unchanging, startling, and magnetic. No one has to know what I think, for I don’t really think anything at all, and no one has to know the details of my life, for there are no good details to know. It is the quality of fame one is after here, without any of its qualities.” Although this statement is delivered tongue-in-cheek, it foregrounds the rest of the novel.
Sheila wants to be perceived in a static, untouchable, shallow manner. It is soon revealed that she has just gone through a divorce, an event that would reasonably unmoor anybody’s sense of identity. However, since the divorce is barely discussed, it would be an oversimplification to cite it as the impetus for her question. Instead, this is just how she is: overly porous to the influence of others, even when it is contradictory. She goes back and forth between wanting to be responsible like her friend Misha and irresponsible like her friend Margaux. She remains fearful of a vision a jealous high school ex-boyfriend drew of her future, in which she is unloved and humiliated. She is susceptible to outside influences because she has not developed her core self.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with continually redefining yourself and trying on different character traits in your 20s and throughout your life—you grow by expanding the boundaries of your selfhood. However, Sheila’s inability to truly know herself becomes even more discomfiting in the context of her identity as an artist—a playwright, to be specific. An artist needs to speak truthfully from their soul for their art to resonate. Art lacks meaning and depth when the artist has no convictions. Sheila spends more time thinking about how she is being perceived on the outside, rather than thinking about her art’s context in a wider world. Since Sheila doesn’t know what she wants to express to the world in the first place, no wonder she has such intense writer’s block. But in that case, where in the book is the case being made for Sheila to commit to being a writer in the first place? And why commit to reading this book?
I don’t have a totally uncharitable view of this book. I appreciated the freeform structure and the discussions between Sheila and her friends about art, especially regarding the ugly painting contest and Margaux’s conflicted feelings about pursuing painting. However, the most thought-provoking parts of the novel come from things other people say, not so much from Sheila herself. It’s telling that when Sheila does hit inspiration for her next work, she draws directly from her daily life and conversations with other people—because there’s not much else going on. Regarding the work as a whole, I have to echo Margaux’s first words as a baby: “Who cares?”
Finally, I’d like to offer some additional questions that extend out from “how should a person be,” that I would be interested in seeing a different book explore:
- How do you reconcile who you are and what you want to do with what society expects of you?
- How do you live by your ethics in a corrupt world?
- How do you stake your path as an artist?
In all seriousness, I have been asking myself the same question as Sheila, the narrator of How Should a Person Be?. I turned 27 a few months ago. As I approach my 30s, I am thinking more intentionally about my habits, my relationships, my career, and my artmaking practice. This is complicated by the fact that almost every morning, I wake up to a headline about violence, climate catastrophe, disease, inequity, or some combination of the above. It's tempting to fall into the trap of despair and disengagement, but I remember that I at least have the individual agency to bear witness, to use art as a liberatory space, and to retain my sense of humor through it all. With these as some of my guiding beliefs, I make decisions that I hope will result in the person that I would like to become, the life that I want to live, and the art that I want to make.
I say this not to judge the narrator according to the principles by which I live my life, but to explain why her neurotic ruminations over how a person should be strike me as especially trivial. She muses noncommittally at the start of the novel about her desire for fame: “I don’t want anything to change, except to be as famous as one can be, but without that changing anything. Everyone would know in their hearts that I am the most famous person alive—but not talk about it too much. And for no one to be too interested in taking my picture, for they’d all carry around in their heads an image of me that was unchanging, startling, and magnetic. No one has to know what I think, for I don’t really think anything at all, and no one has to know the details of my life, for there are no good details to know. It is the quality of fame one is after here, without any of its qualities.” Although this statement is delivered tongue-in-cheek, it foregrounds the rest of the novel.
Sheila wants to be perceived in a static, untouchable, shallow manner. It is soon revealed that she has just gone through a divorce, an event that would reasonably unmoor anybody’s sense of identity. However, since the divorce is barely discussed, it would be an oversimplification to cite it as the impetus for her question. Instead, this is just how she is: overly porous to the influence of others, even when it is contradictory. She goes back and forth between wanting to be responsible like her friend Misha and irresponsible like her friend Margaux. She remains fearful of a vision a jealous high school ex-boyfriend drew of her future, in which she is unloved and humiliated. She is susceptible to outside influences because she has not developed her core self.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with continually redefining yourself and trying on different character traits in your 20s and throughout your life—you grow by expanding the boundaries of your selfhood. However, Sheila’s inability to truly know herself becomes even more discomfiting in the context of her identity as an artist—a playwright, to be specific. An artist needs to speak truthfully from their soul for their art to resonate. Art lacks meaning and depth when the artist has no convictions. Sheila spends more time thinking about how she is being perceived on the outside, rather than thinking about her art’s context in a wider world. Since Sheila doesn’t know what she wants to express to the world in the first place, no wonder she has such intense writer’s block. But in that case, where in the book is the case being made for Sheila to commit to being a writer in the first place? And why commit to reading this book?
I don’t have a totally uncharitable view of this book. I appreciated the freeform structure and the discussions between Sheila and her friends about art, especially regarding the ugly painting contest and Margaux’s conflicted feelings about pursuing painting. However, the most thought-provoking parts of the novel come from things other people say, not so much from Sheila herself. It’s telling that when Sheila does hit inspiration for her next work, she draws directly from her daily life and conversations with other people—because there’s not much else going on. Regarding the work as a whole, I have to echo Margaux’s first words as a baby: “Who cares?”
Finally, I’d like to offer some additional questions that extend out from “how should a person be,” that I would be interested in seeing a different book explore:
- How do you reconcile who you are and what you want to do with what society expects of you?
- How do you live by your ethics in a corrupt world?
- How do you stake your path as an artist?
cruffine11's review against another edition
3.0
I was reading this while writing an essay about Nietzsche and that definitely impacted my reading of Heti. I can't really say this book is good, but it definitely made me think about my identity and such. More importantly, I like how this book is graphically sexual and was really uncomfortable to read aloud in class.