Young women are the new young men: fretted over, examined forensically, culturally anatomised. See, for example, Lena Dunham's Girls, following four mid twenties Brooklynites. In the first episode of this rightly lauded and very modern show, Dunham's Hannah, having been cut off from her parents' previously ever-dripping money tap, rails at her parents, saying "I just need time to find out who the person I'm supposed to be is" (or words to that effect). We laugh at Hannah's naivety, at her self centeredness - but probably also remember painfully clearly that sense that the right mould for you to live in is just out there waiting for you to find.
Sheila Heti's new novel asks exactly that question. In fact, to call it a novel is to underestimate Heti's very original work. Part confessional, part fiction, part very modern self-help book, it follows a young artist named Sheila as she tries to write a play and learn from her friends how to act in the world where all the men she meets, including her lover Israel, are trying to teach her something - about sex, faith, life, art. Sheila is tired of being someone's project and so she travels into the world to investigate how she really is.
How Should A Person Be? is sharp and strange, like a prickly fruit that blends sweetness and bitterness in its taste. Sheila's quest seemed important to me: I remembered being 24 and watching everyone around me to see what the right thing to do was. My flatmate got bikini waxes: should I? My friend was always on a diet: should I be? My other friend went to church: would that help me?
The book's form is unusual: a blend of narration and taped conversations between Sheila and people she encounters. I presumed these were at least partially "real" conversations Sheila Heti has had with her friends. Sheila and her friend Margaux's emails to one another are also included. This mixture of forms, of fact and fiction, is defiantly original. Heti is saying to us, this is something new and important.
And I agree. I actually found the book moving, particularly in its depiction of Sheila's relationship with Israel. No punches are pulled in the fairly explicit presentation of their relationship; but I found Sheila's initial acquiescence to and later questioning of Israel's dominant treatment of her the most revealing part of these sections. I found myself willing her to learn to be true to herself, to take control of her identity.
Some readers might find this book pretentious. It's concerned with high-minded topics, certainly: how much of the self should an artist use in their art? Is it immoral to write about your friends? What is ugliness? But I'm not sure Heti knows or even thinks she knows the answers - it's the asking that's important.
I finished How Should A Person Be? a few days ago and it's lingered in my mind since. A compelling and unusual read, it's also timely and modern. One to prickle your brain and make you see yourself slightly differently. And isn't that what good literature does?
I must thank Fiona Murphy at Vintage Publicity who kindly provided me with a review copy of this novel.
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