"A Joycean experiment" — Anthony Cummins, Telegraph

---

"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." — Publishers Weekly

---

"This is a novel that wonders if the ugly can be beautiful, if there is clarity to be found in the drifting." — Michelle Dean, NPR

---

"Heti flails out in all directions, employing a winsome flexibility and an underlying sadness that deflates any pretension and focuses on the big questions of life. The exuberance of youth is shot through with magic threads of wisdom." — Candace Fertile, Edmonton Journal

---

"Brilliant, forthright and sometimes very funny" — Akiva Gottlieb, The National

---

"An engaging mashup of memoir, fiction and philosophy ... It doesn't answer the question, how should a person be? But it does find an engaging new way of asking it." — Scarlett Thomas, Guardian

---

"Bound to be quoted over and over ... 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, New York Times

---

"[I'm] in awe of this new Toronto writer who seems to be channeling Henry Miller one minute and Joan Didion the next." — Alan Cheuse, NPR

---

"One of the bravest, strangest, most original novels I’ve read this year." — Christopher Boucher, Boston Globe

---

"From pithy quotables ('Night fell, but then, there are always holes to fall into,') to the oddly profound ('If now in some ways I drink too much, it's not that I lack a reverence for the world'), this is a novel that rewards reading, sitting with, and rereading." — Lauren Elkin, Quarterly Conversation

---

"[Heti's] book has a freshness and verve that make you wonder where she will go next." — Irish Times

---

"How Should a Person Be? reveals a talented young voice of a still inchoate generation." — Kay Hymowitz, Wall Street Journal

---

"How Should a Person Be? is a question to be revisited by the author herself, or another writer, or many other writers - but it's also the question novels were invented to respond to." — Joanna Biggs, London Review of Books

---

"Ms. Heti's deadpan, naked voice is what makes Sheila's journey so engaging ... throughout, the reader is beguiled by blunt, sly observations. It is easy to see why a book on the anxiety of celebrity has turned the author into one herself." — Economist

---

"An unforgettable book: intellectually exacting, unsettling in its fragility, bodily as anything painted by Freud, experimental yet crafted as hell, and yes, very funny." — Claudia Dey, National Post

---

"There is something in her story that will resonate with every reader, as Heti's honest rendition of some of life's most humbling truths challenges the novel as we know it." — Hannah Sayle, Memphis Flyer

---

"The good kind of genre muddle ... How Should a Person Be? emerges as part of an entirely different genre: the realistic self-help book. You might not want to follow in Sheila's footsteps, but tagging along on her quixotic mission will be as useful as anything else you're likely to read this year." — Michael Hingston, Vue

---

"Heti is ... capable of arresting sentences that feel utterly now." — Claire Allfree, UK Metro

---

"A portrait of the artist as a young woman, a postmodern self-help book and an autobiography of the mind." — Rebecca Wigod, Vancouver Sun

---

"Vital and funny." — James Wood, New Yorker

---

"This is a novel that abounds with ... wisdom, arrived at in fresh and new ways. For all its inventiveness, there is an old-fashioned integrity, an attention to thought in the prose, resulting in unusual and sharp-eyed observations … We are treated to some truly profound ruminations on what it means to be an artist in our indifferent era." — Literary Review of Canada

---

"[Sheila Heti is] a brilliant, original thinker and an engaging writer." — Chris Kraus, Los Angeles Review of Books

---

"Sharp, witty." — Natasha Lehrer, Jewish Chronicle Online

---

"What Heti’s brain and fingertips offer are expanded possibilities for what the novel can be and can become ... How Should a Person Be? makes curious and combative company." — Anakana Schofield, Globe and Mail

---

"Boldly original ... [Heti] writes cinematically, but with the cockeyed emotional realism of filmmakers like Miranda July and Lena Dunham." — Michael Schaub, NPR

---

"Part confessional, part play, part novel, and more — it's one wild ride. The upfront and unabashed sex makes for a voyeuristic, sometimes hilarious, read. Think HBO's Girls in book form."— Marie Claire

---

"[Heti's] lack of self-censorship [gives] the prose an irrefutable force." — Holly Williams, The Independent

---

"Heti does have a wicked sense of humour and some of her one-liners are genuinely laugh out loud." — John Harding, Daily Mail

---

"Sheila Heti's vaguely autobiographical new novel might make her the Joan Didion of the 'Girls' generation." — Salon

---

"A self-conscious, darkly funny exploration of the strained complexities of female friendship, the makings of bad art, and the finer points of awkward sex ... [Heti] celebrates the extraordinary imperfection in ordinary life." — The Georgia Straight