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Sheila heti's how should a person be6/27/2023 ![]() ![]() We have to pay Heti the courtesy of taking her question literally. In Pure Colour, she follows her fascination with the sacred into domains so surreal that we have to abandon any notion that she’s merely some sort of postmodern diarist. Her novels have the digressive quality of essays, and they take on such topics as what God wants of her-that is, if there’s a God to do the wanting. Heti uses the details of her life to do theology. She is doing more than blurring the boundary between the real and the made-up. Heti plunders her experiences and emotions and sexuality for material, but what novelist doesn’t, to a greater or lesser extent? In Heti’s hands, her story is a means to an end that most so-called autofiction writers-indeed, most writers of anything perceived as metafictional-would shy away from. Her new novel, Pure Colour, has one important element drawn from life, the death of her father. How Should a Person Be? hews closely to Heti’s coming-of-age as a writer in a small circle of young artists in Toronto, and the narrator of Motherhood is a successful writer and childless divorcée approaching 40, as Heti was when she wrote the book. I don’t deny that some of her work has autobiographical content. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. ![]()
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