How Should a Person Be? in Women in Clothes discussion, with editors Sheila Heti, Leanne Shapton, and Heidi Julavits

Sep 13, 2012 Rand rated it it was amazing

I read the US version, which is different than the Canadian one, which came first.

it's a book about life and authenticity and art and love. move along if those subjects don't interest you, or if you have trouble distinguishing from the author of a memoir from the character of the author from the person who has spoken on the book she has writ.

There is something about writing and publishing and reading that is all so inherently raw and vulnerable in how isolated individuals can bridge their minds ...more

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Jan 03, 2014 Jenny rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I like reading books with mixed reviews so I can see on which side of the coin I lie....and I liked most of this book. I would probably give it 3 stars but there were some parts that I completely adored. So 4.

I can understand why Miranda July would like the writing. They both write about the ugly awkwardness, shame, and self doubt in ourselves, and they have a way of turning it into sincere, endearing prose. It is the ugliness that shows us how we are all alike, not the beauty.

While the plot w I like reading books with mixed reviews so I can see on which side of the coin I lie....and I liked most of this book. I would probably give it 3 stars but there were some parts that I completely adored. So 4.

I can understand why Miranda July would like the writing. They both write about the ugly awkwardness, shame, and self doubt in ourselves, and they have a way of turning it into sincere, endearing prose. It is the ugliness that shows us how we are all alike, not the beauty.

While the plot was a flimsy structure for Heti to wax on her existential woes with, I think the little sentences and paragraphs that had no real flow with the book were still worth it. Heti is a talented writer. I liked the character of Margeaux the best, even though I think the author relied too much on her character for juxtaposition and self-reliance.

and I thought the ending was a "quitter" ending. So much talk of this play and how a person should be and the ending answered nothing. It was just another short scene. If throughout the whole book you are searching to answer an impending question and then at the end write about two friends playing squash in a huff, then I can't help but throw my hands up like little Margeaux and say, "who cares!?." and I want to care. I don't want to feel deceived.

I would have to agree that the sex parts were not so much endearingly awkward as they were crass, pointless, and confusing. I kept thinking her sex with Israel was a self depreciating kind to fill a void? Was it? That's what I mostly gather from sex that includes all the c*m, f*cking, big c*ck, d*ck in mouth, pounding stuff. Or maybe it was just THAT great. :p I haven't a clue. I kept trying to create hidden themes or meanings in the book, with Israel and all the Jewish reference, with the Ugly Painting Competition, with her and the salon....but I think I was reading wayyy too into things, because her themes are pretty straight forward and obvious. So maybe I wanted everything to mean more than it did. There are parts that come off as just pretentious and petty, and where I couldn't help but say, "this is stupid." But then there were parts that really tugged at me, and maybe I liked this book the way I did because if I can read a paragraph or a sentence that seems so in-tune with my own experience and past then I find it all worth it. I liked this book...for the most part. ...more

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