How Should a Person Be?

A Novel

By: Sheila Heti

Narrated by: Adam Hammond, Alison Deon, Amanda Nkeremihigo, Caleb Stull, James F. Dunnigan, James Harkness, Laura di Vilio, Leonard Rebick, Margaux Williamson, Michael Ross Albert, Misha Glouberman, Sheila Heti, Stephen Joffe, Wai Kin Chan

A raw, startling, genre-defying novel of friendship, sex, and love in the new millennium—a compulsive read that's like "spending a day with your new best friend" (Bookforum) This program is read by the author.

Reeling from a failed marriage, Sheila, a twentysomething playwright, finds herself unsure of how to live and create. When Margaux, a talented painter and free spirit, and Israel, a sexy and depraved artist, enter her life, Sheila hopes that through close—sometimes too close—observation of her new friend, her new lover, and herself, she might regain her footing in art and life.

Using transcribed conversations, real emails, plus heavy doses of fiction, the brilliant and always innovative Sheila Heti crafts a work that is part literary novel, part self-help manual, and part bawdy confessional. It's a totally shameless and dynamic exploration into the way we live now, which breathes fresh wisdom into the eternal questions: What is the sincerest way to love? What kind of person should you be?

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

©2012 Sheila Heti (P)2025 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Ms. Heti's deadpan, naked voice is what makes Sheila's journey so engaging… [Her] mordant take on modernity encourages introspection. It is easy to see why a book on the anxiety of celebrity has turned the author into one herself.” —The Economist

“A significant cultural artifact.” —LA Review of Books

“Funny…odd, original, and nearly unclassifiable…Sheila Heti does know something about how many of us, right now, experience the world, and she has gotten that knowledge down on paper, in a form unlike any other novel I can think of.” —David Haglund, The New York Times Book Review

“Utterly contemporary, wickedly clever, and profoundly irreverent.” —Lilith Magazine