In painful lessons, Sheila learns she must temper her outward, searching gaze with the difficult job of self-disclosure. She loses herself in a punishing sexual infatuation with a guy named Israel, and in a profound friendship with the painter Margaux. Her struggle to write a play begins to pull her under. How could I know which would look best on me?”), we soon see that she is stuck. As she hangs out with her friends, wondering which one of them she should be like (“Responsibility looks so good on Misha, and irresponsibility looks so good on Margaux. But the book also shows the flip side of her reliance on a gifted ensemble cast. Heti depicts its nonchalant yet serious cultural criticism, its hybrid of self-help and philosophy, and its fondness for collaboration. Her book is set in her Toronto milieu, stars many of her Google-able artist friends, and is steeped in that scene’s values and style. Heti is a good talker (she is The Believer’s interviews editor), and a conversational writer. When God told him to lead the people from bondage, she writes, Moses balked: “ God, I have never been a good talker. The flawed prophet is a comforting example to the self-doubting Sheila. In her quest for greatness, she holds out the absurd possibility that she’s like Moses-an inspiration that reappears throughout Heti’s novel in vivid détournements of the book of Exodus. Recorded dialogue, e-mails, and brutally self-effacing passages fill short chapters of this “novel from life,” united in an uninhibited first-person performance: Her tone can be earnest and eager to please, flippant and crass, terribly lucid and darkly funny. “It could be me.” With some shame in her ambitious conviction, Heti believes her own genius might lie in the transcription of the everyday-that the particulars of her life as a young woman artist can show us what’s human. “One good thing about being a woman is we haven’t too many examples yet of what a genius looks like,” Sheila Heti’s protagonist, also named Sheila, deadpans.
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