A review by chaoticbibliophile
How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti

Did not finish book. Stopped at 65%.

This started out living up to its reputation as one of the best examples of "thinky navel-gazey autofiction": Interesting musings, solid writing, insightful with compelling characters (even in their unnerving flaws), etc. It is also quite funny, which I always admire in a novel. But then... it kept going. It kept going and the interesting points became tired and it kept going even after it seemed like the novel had said everything it could possibly have to say and it kept stretching the (already thin, as befits the genre) plot. I began skimming, then jumping, chapters to see if it grabbed my interest again. A couple of times it did, so I went back and ploughed through the skipped chapters, but then it stopped working. I skipped to the last chapter and it convinced me to DNF.

This was somewhat similar to my experience with Motherhood, which also started out solid and deflated somewhere in the middle. This one is better, though, so if you're curious, I'd say give this one a go. I think I'm done with Sheila, though... although I would probably be in for some of her essays.