Will Nedved, cofounder of the Gift Theatre Company, can’t put down:
How Should a Person Be? One of my favorite novels of the last year is Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?, a hilarious and at times unsettling investigation of the title question through the follies of Heti, a recently divorced writer who transcribes the conversations of her friend Margaux Williamson in a misguided effort to complete a long-procrastinated playwriting commission. That Williamson is an actual Toronto-based artist calls into question the veracity of the entire novel. It ties into another genre-defying book I recommend, Carl Wilson’s Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, a collection of essays about the equally reviled and adored Canadian songstress that reflects on aesthetics, popular culture, and Wilson’s own emotional availability in the wake of a divorce. Only later did I learn that Heti and Wilson were writing about their marriage to each other.
