Intense, rewarding and bracingly serious

Profoundly beautiful, cathartic writing.

A fine study of the nature and strength of family ties and the morality, or otherwise, of conforming where it matters

This beautifully written composition does that rare thing, of provoking free thought, while scrutinising the far-reaching repercussions of such rebellious activity

Harvey's slow, intense thoughtfulness feels positively Woolfean at times. She thinks deeply, and writes beautifully about these thoughts.

This is a novel of ideas that also creates believable characters and explores complex relationships. Harvey's prose is graceful and unhurried, full of sharp observation and moments of subtly understated pathos

There's still something compelling in the way Harvey resists the easy and the obvious. The result is a novel of both depth and defiance

A moving novel about family duty and friendship set against a London backdrop of national unrest

Deftly controlled and exquisitely measured

How would Socrates get on in 21st century Britain? This is the question at the heart of Samantha Harvey's ambitious second novel

The beauty of the intense plot lies in its economy. The novel is so finely tuned, it is hard to find any passage where she is not fully in control. No matter how dramatic the events she describes, they never drown the ideas being discussed.

Harvey's talent is in the details of both characters and relationships that seem trivial but are telling ... Harvey is a master of language, adept at both Wildean one-liners ... and more profound expression

In this Socrates-like story Samantha Harvey examines a dramatic sibling relationship whilst questioning the place of philosophy in modern life

Lovely observations on a sibling relationship

Graceful and full of sharp observation and moments of understated pathos

Yan Lianke sees and describes his characters with great tenderness . . . this talented and sensitive writer exposes the absurdity of our time

An unconventional blur of fact and fiction, How Should a Person Be? is an engaging cocktail of memoir, novel and self-help guide

A candid collection of taped interviews and emails, random notes and daring exposition…fascinating

Provocative, funny and original

A serious work about authenticity, how to lead a moral life and accept one’s own ugliness

An exuberantly productive mess, filtered and reorganised after the fact...rather than working within a familiar structure, Heti has gone out to look for things that interest her and "put a fence around" whatever she finds

A sharp, witty exploration of relationships, art and celebrity culture

[Sheila Heti] has an appealing restlessness, a curiosity about new forms, and an attractive freedom from pretentiousness or cant…How Should a Person Be? offers a vital and funny picture of the excitements and longueurs of trying to be a young creator in a free, late-capitalist Western City…This talented writer may well have identified a central dialectic of twenty-first-century postmodern being

Funny…odd, original, and nearly unclassifiable…Sheila Heti does know something about how many of us, right now, experience the world, and she has gotten that knowledge down on paper, in a form unlike any other novel I can think of

Playful, funny... absolutely true

Sheila's clever, openhearted commentary will draw wry smiles from readers empathetic to modern life's trials and tribulations

Amusing and original