4. How Should a Person Be? By Sheila Heti

Part literary novel, part self-help manual and part vivid exploration of the artistic and sexual impulse, How Should a Person Be? is a raw, urgent depiction of female friendship and of the shape of our lives now. Heti asks, broadly, “What is the most noble way to love? What kind of person should you be?” Through a mixture of emails, transcribed conversations and prose, Heti’s protagonist travels from Toronto to New York to Atlantic City in search of clarity—a very 20-something thing to do, if you ask us.

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