How Should A Person Be by Sheila Heti
Sheila’s twenties went as expected.
She had a wedding.
She served as the host.
She was requested to create a play for a theatre.
She then realized that she lacked playwriting skills.
said tidying up after the party was her favourite part of the event.
And that she felt like she was hitting a brick block in her marriage.
Sheila gives up her husband and her play in order to get close to Margaux, a painter who is free from oppression, and starts sleeping with Israel, a domineering man who is brilliant at sex but not at creating art. She fully commits to observing them and everyone around her, learning about their lifestyles out of a desperate need to understand: How Should a Person Be?
How Should A Person Be by Sheila Heti
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The tale is just one of the numerous attempts made throughout human history to provide an answer. However, it fails to identify the solution, or perhaps there isn’t one, or perhaps there are as many solutions as there are people in the universe, or perhaps Sheila Heti has the insight that we will never be able to fully understand what a good person should be like. For me, this is an exploration of life, and as such, it deserves to be published. Many people could find the narrative’s format strange and upsetting. Undoubtedly, “How should a person be?” is considerably different from most books I’ve previously read, but James Joyce’s Ulysses was also quite unique. Thank you, Sheila, for creating such a humorous and thought-provoking work of art.
Heti creates an engaging, brave, and mordantly amusing journey into one woman’s heart and thoughts using transcripts, real emails, and significant amounts of fiction. I’m quite sure I’ve never read a book where one woman artist aids and inspires another. Novels involving artistic friendships (inspiring, creative partnerships) are actually quite uncommon. Sheila is assisted by Margaux in refocusing her artistic endeavours and is shown for the first time that she is capable of having a close friendship with a woman. I thought this component of the book was completely “new,” as well as incredibly fascinating and enjoyable. Margaux is attractive because she offers a solution, whereas Sheila Heti made “Sheila” the character extremely repulsive solely because she despised how trapped she was in her work.
