Sheila Heti

Pure Colour is a moving and astonishing novel, as unique as each of Sheila Heti's books have been, but also transcendent in a new way: a work that illuminates a full spectrum of thought and feeling. It's about "the world beyond this world"; about God and critics and school and death and love and fathers and orphans and lamps. Mira left home. Then she got a job at a lamp store. The lamp store sold Tiffany lamps, and other lamps made of coloured glass. Each lamp was extremely expensive. The least expensive one cost four hundred dollars. This was a month's salary for her. Every day, before they closed up for the night, Mira had to turn off every single lamp. This took about eleven minutes. Mostly she turned off lamps by pulling on little beaded cords. She had to be careful not to let the cord snap back and hit the bulb or the lamp. She had to pull the cords with a gentle sort of care. It was tedious work. Mira didn't have the morning shift. That person had to turn on the lamps. Their job was no better than hers.

A Novel

Pure Colour

In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti's novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice

Motherhood

From the internationally acclaimed author of The Middle Storiesand Ticknorcomes a bold interrogation into the possibility of a beautiful life. How Should a Person Be?is a novel of many identities: an autobiography of the mind, a postmodern self-help book, and a fictionalized portrait of the artist as a young woman — of two such artists, in fact. For reasons multiple and mysterious, Sheila finds herself in a quandary of self-doubt, questioning how a person should be in the world. Inspired by her friend Margaux, a painter, and her seemingly untortured ability to live and create, Sheila casts Margaux as material, embarking on a series of recordings in which nothing is too personal, too ugly, or too banal to be turned into art. Along the way, Sheila confronts a cast of painters who are equally blocked in an age in which the blow job is the ultimate art form. She begins questioning her desire to be Important, her quest to be both a leader and a pupil, and her unwillingness to sacrifice herself. Searching, uncompromising and yet mordantly funny, How Should a Person Be?is a brilliant portrait of art-making and friendship from the psychic underground of Canada's most fiercely original writer.

How Should a Person Be?

Leanne Shapton

Heidi Julavits

Collects essays, interviews, photographs, and other contributions inspired by surveys asking women of different backgrounds from throughout the world about clothing, fashion, personal appearance, and what they mean to each individual.

Women in Clothes

An enthralling work from one of our greatest literary innovators, shortlisted for the Giller and winner of the GG for Fiction. A little over a decade ago, Sheila Heti—the award-winning author of a string of modern classics including How Should a Person Be?, Motherhood, and Pure Colour—began looking back at the diaries she'd kept over the previous ten years, searching for signs of deeper change inside herself. She loaded all 500,000 words of her journals into Microsoft Excel, to order the sentences alphabetically and seek out patterns and repetitions. How many times had she written, “I hate him,” for example? With the sentences untethered from the narrative of her diaries, she started to see herself—and the Self—in a new way: as something quite solid, anchored by shockingly few characteristic preoccupations. Returning to the project over the years, something more universal and novelistic emerged. Alphabetical Diaries is the sublime and probing result—one that rises to the heights of artistry and insight for which Heti is rightfully acclaimed.

Alphabetical Diaries

Pure Color

Misha Glouberman

A lighthearted cultural assessment of the experience of working in and enjoying the entertainment venues of cities reveals what everyday aspects of life are saying about today's world, touching on subjects ranging from monogamy and party behavior to spam filters and loud music. Original. 15,000 first printing.

How to Live, Work, and Play in the City

The Chairs Are Where the People Go

A thrilling confessional from the award-winning, beloved author of Pure Colour. Sheila Heti kept a record of her thoughts over a ten-year period, then arranged the sentences from A to Z. Passionate and reflective, joyful and despairing, these are the alphabetical diaries.

A brilliant portrayal of finding a beautiful life by one of Canada's most exciting literary talents, now available as an Anansi Book Club edition featuring discussion questions. How Should a Person Be? is an unabashedly honest and hilarious tour through the unknowable pieces of one woman’s heart and mind, an irresistible torn-from-life book about friendship, art, sex, and love. Part literary novel, part self-help manual, and part racy confessional, it is a fearless exploration into the way we live now by one of the most highly inventive and thoughtful young writers working today.

826 National

Author Sheila Heti works with a group of high school students to select the year's best new fiction, journalism, poetry, essays, and comics aimed at readers age fifteen and up.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018

Annelik

Um romance provocador e corajoso sobre o desejo e o dever de procriar, escrito pela brilhante escritora canadense Sheila Heti. Em Maternidade, Sheila Heti reflete sobre os ganhos e as perdas para uma mulher que decide se tornar mãe, tratando a decisão que mais traz consequências na vida adulta com a franqueza, a originalidade e o humor que lhe renderam reconhecimento internacional por seu livro anterior, How Should a Person Be?. Ao se aproximar dos quarenta anos, numa fase em que todas as suas amigas se perguntam quando irão ter filhos, a narradora do romance intimista e urgente de Heti — no limiar entre a ficção e autorreflexão — questiona se aquela é uma experiência que ela quer ter. Numa narrativa que se estende ao longo de muitos anos, moldada a partir de conversas com seus pares e seu parceiro e de sua relação com os pais, ela se vê em um embate para fazer uma escolha sábia e coerente. Depois de buscar ajuda na filosofia, no próprio corpo, no misticismo e no acaso, ela descobre a resposta num lugar bem mais familiar do que imaginaria. “Nunca vi ninguém escrever sobre a relação entre não ter filhos, escrever e a tristeza das mães do modo que Sheila Heti faz.” — Elif Batuman, autora de Os possessos e A idiota

Um romance

Maternidade

Wildly acclaimed in Canada, this book, published there by Anansi, marks the debut of a remarkable young writer, first published by McSweeney's when she was twenty-three and living at home with her dad and brother. The Middle Stories is a strikingly original collection of stories, fables, and short brutalities that are alternately heartwarming, cruel, and hilarious.

The Middle Stories

On a cold, rainy night, an aging bachelor named George Ticknor prepares to visit his childhood friend Prescott, a successful man who is now one of the leading intellectual lights of their generation. With a hastily baked pie in his hands, and a lifetime of guilt and insecurity weighing upon his soul, he sets out for the Prescotts' dinner party--a party at which he'd just as soon never arrive. Distantly inspired by the real-life friendship between the great historian William Hickling Prescott and his biographer, Ticknor is a witty, fantastical study of resentment; and a biting history of a one-sided friendship.

Ticknor

Ein Buch für alle, die überlegen, ein Kind zu bekommen, die schon eins haben, die keines wollten, die nicht wissen, was sie wollen, obwohl die Uhr tickt. In ihren späten 30ern, als die Freundinnen sich fragen, wann sie endlich Mutter werden, fragt Sheila Heti sich, ob sie es überhaupt werden will. Mal hierhin, mal dorthin gezogen von ihren Mitmenschen, ihrem Partner und den Verpflichtungen gegenüber ihren jüdischen Vorfahren, versucht sie eine weise und moralische Entscheidung zu treffen. Nachdem Philosophie, ihr Körper, Mystik und Zufall nicht geholfen haben, findet sie die Antwort viel näher bei sich. "Mutterschaft" ist mutig, tief empfunden und so originell, dass es jede Debatte über Weiblichkeit, Elternschaft und unseren Lebenssinn bereichern wird.

Mutterschaft

Colore puro è un canto sulla fine di tutte le cose, perché anche se anche tutto ciò che amiamo, e odiamo, andrà perduto, l’unico conforto possibile è che saremo insieme, nel grande disegno della creazione imperfetta.«Dopo aver creato i cieli e la Terra, Dio ha fatto un passo indietro per contemplare la creazione, come un pittore che si allontana dalla tela. Il momento in cui ci troviamo ora è proprio questo: quello in cui Dio fa un passo indietro. Chi può dire da quando va avanti? Dall’inizio dei tempi, non c’è dubbio. E quanto tempo sarebbe? E per quanto ancora durerà?»In questa prima bozza del mondo, una ragazza di nome Mira lascia la sua casa di sempre per iscriversi all’accademia e diventare una critica d'arte. Qui incontra Annie e sente il suo petto aprirsi come un portale, ma dove questo conduca ancora non lo sa. «La prima bozza di qualcosa ha sempre un che di eccitante: è anarchica, sconclusionata, piena di vita, difettosa. Le prime bozze hanno qualcosa che manca alle seconde.»Quando il padre malato di Mira muore, il suo spirito si intrufola in lei ed è come se i suoi vuoti interiori venissero colmati. Tutti tranne uno: il sentimento dell’assenza. In un pomeriggio assolato, suo padre le aveva promesso che un giorno le avrebbe comprato il colore puro, e ora che non c'è più non potrà mai stringere tra le mani quella materia indefinita. Il mondo senza di lui ha perso di senso e per fuggire da questa assurdità Mira si trasforma in una foglia. Ma l’essere vivi e presenti è un problema che non può essere risolto dall’alto del ramo di un albero.«Le persone nate da un uovo d’uccello sono interessate alla bellezza, all’ordine e all’armonia. La gente nata da un uovo di pesce sembra sospesa nella gelatina; per un pesce, ciò che conta è la collettività. Una persona nata da un uovo di orso invece è come una bambina che si tiene stretta la sua bambola. Sono poche le persone che gli orsi dichiarano di amare e di voler proteggere.Le persone nate da questi tre tipi diversi di uova non si capiranno mai completamente.»

Colore puro

All Our Happy Days Are Stupid

Vendela Vida

Ross Simonini

Presents a collection of conversations between writers of fiction and nonfiction, occurring between 2007 and 2012.

Sheila Heti

About

Books

Join the club