ONE OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES'S 15 BEST BOOKS OF 2024

Sheila Heti collected 500,000 words from a decade's worth of journals, put the sentences in a spreadsheet, and sorted them alphabetically. She cut and cut and was left with 60,000 words of brilliance and mayhem, joy and sorrow. These are her alphabetical diaries.

Sheila Heti is the acclaimed author of the novel How Should a Person Be?, the story collection The Middle Stories, which was published in Germany, France, The Netherlands, the United States, and Spain, and the novel Ticknor, which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. Her writing has appeared in various literary anthologies and in several US and Canadian publications, including New York Times Magazine, Esquire, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and Brick. Heti is also the creator of the popular Toronto and New York-based lecture series, Trampoline Hall. She studied playwriting at the National Theatre School in Montreal, and philosophy and art history at the University of Toronto. Sheila Heti lives in Toronto.

Sheila Heti's profile page

ONE OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES'S 15 BEST BOOKS OF 2024

“Powerful and intimate. . . . [Alphabetical Diaries] is made up of Heti’s frank, funny, filthy, and casually philosophical diaries, ten years of them. . . . Heti has written a small classic; she has shot a lasting arrow into the hide of the memoir form. . . . A profound experience.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“[Alphabetical Diaries] burrows so deeply into a single psyche that it transcends the personal, as if emerging from one collective, neurotic consciousness. . . . The [result] is exhilarating: both intimate and withholding, repetitive and generative. . . . A monologue that is meditative, propulsive and yet yearning, like a chant, a mantra or a prayer.’” —The New Statesman
“Profound. We see [Heti’s] fixations, her questions about life, love, writing and making a home in the world, weave in and out of her mind for a decade, with the constancy of the moon crossing the night sky. . . . It’s hypnotically satisfying. . . . Alphabetical Diaries beautifully expands and complements Heti’s larger, moral project.” —The Globe and Mail

“Alphabetical Diaries feels like the apotheosis of [Heti’s] writing style: a book that uses a rigid structural discipline to intimately lay bare the inherently chaotic, even arbitrary nature of consciousness. . . . Heti . . . has turned the pitfalls of the diary form—the relentless self-absorption, the combination of trivia and pathos—into a dazzling aesthetic virtue. Like a hologram, this book refracts an endlessly shifting light. . . . The results are strangely moving.” —The Telegraph
“Each book that Heti has written has pressed further into the possibilities of what fiction can be while staying grounded in the mining of the self. . . . The genius of [Alphabetical Diaries] is in how broadly human and carefully constructed it also feels.” —The Los Angeles Times

“A marvel. . . . Sublime . . . truly unique and genuinely affecting. . . . [Heti creates] a dizzying effect, which simultaneously subverts the idea of a singular meaning while creating, in its wake, fractalized understandings of meanings, plural, each tiny constituent part containing multitudes. Alphabetical Diaries is a reading experience like no other, a book of rare power and genuine emotional connection.” —Toronto Star

“Thrilling, very funny, often filthy, and a surprisingly powerful weapon against loneliness . . . [Alphabetical Diaries] is a screwball replication of how consciousness operates.” —The Guardian

“A radical adventure in form . . . by one of our best living authors.” —The Washington Post
“Rich with intimacies and disclosures, these fragments show an artist searching for the right way to arrange her life.” —The New Yorker

“A radical fusion of linguistic experiment and philosophical inquiry . . . by turns illuminating, playful, poetic.” —The Guardian

“Enigmatic and intriguing. . . . A deeply impressionistic dive into one person’s mind.” —Toronto Life
“A monumental achievement. . . . A meticulous work of art. . . . Alphabetical Diaries offers us a new way of seeing ourselves.” —The Winnipeg Free Press
“A profoundly unusual, experimental, yet engrossing work of not-quite-memoir . . . settling into the rhythm of Heti's poetic observations gives way to a rich narrative reward.” —Elle
“Delightful, strange . . . ecstatic, gut-wrenching. . . . Heti’s experiment generates delicious uncertainties: possibilities, truly endless and often contradictory. . . . The rapture of reading Heti is feeling her rapture writing: ‘I smile as I write this. I so much enjoy just thinking.’ And it’s a joy that spreads.” —The Baffler

“Every sentence is a world unto itself . . . [juxtaposing] the mundane and the profound. . . . Alphabetical Diaries reveals . . . intimate and embarrassing truth about the immovability of the self.” —The Walrus
“[A]n absolute delight.” —Los Angeles Times
“From romantic hang-ups and desire to anxiety and ennui, [Heti’s] curated diaries articulate daily life’s ordinary and routine melodramas.” —Brooklyn Rail
“Through her acclaimed novels How Should a Person Be?, Motherhood and Pure Colour, Sheila Heti has blended the autobiographical and the fictitious in the pursuit of truth . . . [Alphabetical Diaries] conjures magic out of a wild exercise.” ―Variety
“Fascinating. . . . An enthralling experiment. . . . Heti is amusingly self-effacing . . . and wise. . . . The alphabetised sentences give the book momentum and entertaining accidents of language create intriguing micro-stories on every page. . . . [A] picture of a committed, inventive, sincere writer and the times she lives in.” —iNews
“Inventive, achingly intimate, and vulnerable, [Alphabetical Diaries is] a refreshing experiment with how a sentence lands without further context. A true testament to, a celebration of, and a masterclass in the art of sentences.” —Paste Magazine
“[Alphabetical Diaries] breaks new ground. . . . With Heti at the helm, this book is exciting, radical, and clever. . . . Just brilliant.” —AnOther Magazine
“Vacillating between the mundane, the shocking, and the aphoristic, Alphabetical Diaries constantly drew me into its gravitational pull. . . . The rhythm and randomness of Heti’s voice whispering from different points in time creates an intoxicating trance. . . . Alphabetical Diaries achieves something . . . sacred.” —Bookforum
“Playful and philosophical. . . . A compelling work that feels both formally brand new . . . and uncannily familiar in its evocations of life. . . . As well as the energy and beauty of individual sentences, their juxtapositions are ingenious, truthful and often very funny. . . . Reading Alphabetical Diaries is like an intimate encounter with the soul of an insatiably curious, brilliant, contradictory, effervescent writer intensely engaged with words, ideas, art, and life. . . . A work of great humour, brilliance, and beauty.” —The Sydney Morning Herald
“I think Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti is a future classic. A great concept executed perfectly.” —Zadie Smith, author of The Fraud
“An arresting literary experiment.” —Publishers Weekly

“Playful yet disciplined . . . [Heti] knows how to engage the mundane details of life with curiosity and thoughtfulness.” —Booklist

“Readers will become familiar with a set of thematic preoccupations: anxieties about professional success, churning erotic aspirations and frustrations, self-deprecating confessions masking self-regard. Heti provides some genuine fun in her invitation to discover more conventional coherence by reconstructing a chronological version of events . . . An original form of self-exposure emerges as we see some of the author's verbal habits laid bare.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A thought-provoking experiment in self-reflection and prose, Alphabetical Diaries is perhaps Sheila Heti’s most intimate and most universal book yet.” —Shelf Awareness

“Fearless. . . . A playful and unpredictable self-examination. . . . Heti’s frank vulnerability is refreshing in a world where irreproachable selves are impeccably curated online.” —The Monthly
“A cerebral, romantic exploration of the connections and questions that weave throughout [a] life. . . . Alphabetical Diaries is a feat of creativity, demonstrating Heti’s considered yet candid mastery of language and storytelling.” —The Skinny
“Sheila Heti is a master of form, constantly expanding the bounds of fiction while expertly defamiliarizing the experience of being human, ultimately drawing you closer to it.” —Nylon
“A work of surprising and moving insight. . . . Alphabetical Diaries is a pleasure to read, a book which feels like it can be savoured, dwelt upon, each sentence picked apart and examined singly or as part of a whole. . . . [coming] . . . as close as it is possible to truly knowing another’s inner life.” —The Arts Desk

“A book that is in many ways is an ode to the sentence; from the muscle of a single line to the power that comes with accrual. An immersive and hugely entertaining read.” —Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations

“Alphabetical Diaries is a testament to Heti's artistic power. She gently leads the reader into new dimensions of language previously undiscovered. Beautiful and uncompromising.” —Marlowe Granados, author of Happy Hour
“I am drawn to Sheila Heti's writing like a moth to a flame and Alphabetical Diaries is amongst the most affecting, exquisite books I've ever encountered. It is, simply put, utterly and startlingly good. Heti writes so creaturely, so bodily, that it feels like a whole new genre is being formed as we read.” —Kerri ní Dochartaigh author of Cacophony of Bone

“Sheila Heti keeps transforming my idea of writing. Her Alphabetical Diaries isn’t just dirty and funny and poignant; it reproposes everything you thought about a self and the way time passes.” ―Adam Thirlwell, author of The Future Future

“I read Sheila Heti's Alphabetical Diaries slowly, over the course of about a month―just a letter or two each morning with my coffee, before I began writing in my own journal. It was a lovely, warm, intimate reading experience, one I savored while it lasted, and missed when it was over. A beautiful, unusual book.” ―Kristen Roupenian, author of You Know You Want this: “Cat Person” and Other Stories