"Some of my all-time favourite writers are alive and working today--Sheila Heti, for instance, whom I admire and love with all my heart." --Sally Rooney in The Irish Times "Sorting through 10 years'' worth of her own journal entries, Sheila Heti embarks on a grand project to rearrange them in novel ways to make new meaning. Rather than a cosmetic endeavour, Heti births something far more profound, at times redefining the very idea of writing ." --Chandreyee Ray, Vogue "I think Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti is a future classic. A great concept executed perfectly." --Zadie Smith, author of The Fraud "Heti has definitely produced a deliberately weird experiment, but hearing it out loud transforms Alphabetical Diaries into a kind of spoken-word, longform poetry. [Kate Berlant] adds that extra pizazz, so you really get a window into the creative mind as it shifts quickly from moments of despair to lightbulbs of insight to incidents of sexual desire to the recollection of totally random literary facts." --Marshall Heyman, Vulture (Best New Audiobooks of 2024) "The effects of Heti''s experiment are overwhelmingly many: variously delightful, strange, jarring (that''s the point), banal (that''s the point!), ecstatic, gut-wrenching, and almost always very funny--in Heti''s flip, exclamation-point-y and exclamation-point-worthy way .
The rapture of reading Heti is feeling her rapture writing . And it''s a joy that spreads." --Vanessa Lily Chung, The Baffler "Rich with intimacies and disclosures, these fragments show an artist searching for the right way to arrange her life." -- The New Yorker "Brainy, provocative, and divulging . Heti has always dived deeper into herself than most, surfacing with immersive and intoxicating expositions." --Sophie Van Well Groeneveld, The Rumpus "[ Alphabetical Diaries isnd intoxicating expositions." --Sophie Van Well Groeneveld, The Rumpus "[ Alphabetical Diaries is] a text best consumed in long sittings in order for its echoes and serendipities to register, but it''s exciting, too, to be reminded of just how much narrative oomph can be packed into that most basic building block of prose--the sentence . In embracing life''s randomness and so thoroughly disrupting the urge to impose, through prose, order and a sense of the evolving self, she ultimately reveals just how solid our innate characteristics are and how irrepressible narrative can be.
" -- Hephzibah Anderson, The Observer "Slick and oddly captivating . Thrilling, very funny, often filthy, and a surprisingly powerful weapon against loneliness . How it achieves all this has to do with the sentences themselves, but even more than that with the unlikelihood of their arrangement; it''s the sentences'' crackpot proximity to one another that makes them sing." --Claire Dederer, The Guardian "I slipped to the other side of the Möbius strip and found myself in what felt like a direct encounter with a contradictory, ordinary person changing and remaining unchanged through the years . Alphabetical Diaries constantly drew me into its gravitational pull . Heti''s project as an artist: to be as open-hearted of a reader as she is as a writer, to go with her gratefully into this meeting of childlike wonder, existential dread, and that near-constant horniness." --Catherine Lacey, Bookforum "This new book--a collection of Heti''s personal diaries, written over the course of a decade, then alphabetized and sheared into hypnotic installments of funny, plaintive, and exhortative prose--shows us how people are. Reading it, one is struck by the awesome continuity of the human mind, the way we''re always turning over the same ideas and questions, but also our naked contradictions.
" --Jake Nevins, Interview " Alphabetical Diaries shows how a simple sorting technique helps Heti get at the truth of her own life . What emerges, across 26 chapters, is a portrait of a writer carving out her own definition of artistic integrity and truth." --Celine Nguyen, ArtReview "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 felt like a direct encounter with a contradictory, ordinary person changing and remaining unchanged through the years . Alphabetical Diaries constantly drew me into its gravitational pull . Heti''s project as an artist: to be as open-hearted of a reader as she is as a writer, to go with her gratefully into this meeting of childlike wonder, existential dread, and that near-constant horniness." --Catherine Lacey, Bookforum "This new book--a collection of Heti''s personal diaries, written over the course of a decade, then alphabetized and sheared into hypnotic installments of funny, plaintive, and exhortative prose--shows us how people are. Reading it, one is struck by the awesome continuity of the human mind, the way we''re always turning over the same ideas and questions, but also our naked contradictions.
" --Jake Nevins, Interview " Alphabetical Diaries shows how a simple sorting technique helps Heti get at the truth of her own life . What emerges, across 26 chapters, is a portrait of a writer carving out her own definition of artistic integrity and truth." --Celine Nguyen, ArtReview "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 at emerges, across 26 chapters, is a portrait of a writer carving out her own definition of artistic integrity and truth." --Celine Nguyen, ArtReview "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 felt like a direct encounter with a contradictory, ordinary person changing and remaining unchanged through the years . Alphabetical Diaries constantly drew me into its gravitational pull . Heti''s project as an artist: to be as open-hearted of a reader as she is as a writer, to go with her gratefully into this meeting of childlike wonder, existential dread, and that near-constant horniness.
" --Catherine Lacey, Bookforum "This new book--a collection of Heti''s personal diaries, written over the course of a decade, then alphabetized and sheared into hypnotic installments of funny, plaintive, and exhortative prose--shows us how people are. Reading it, one is struck by the awesome continuity of the human mind, the way we''re always turning over the same ideas and questions, but also our naked contradictions." --Jake Nevins, Interview " Alphabetical Diaries shows how a simple sorting technique helps Heti get at the truth of her own life . What emerges, across 26 chapters, is a portrait of a writer carving out her own definition of artistic integrity and truth." --Celine Nguyen, ArtReview "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 felt like a direct encounter with a contradictory, ordinary person changing and remaining unchanged through the years . Alphabetical Diaries constantly drew me into its gravitational pull . Heti''s project as an artist: to be as open-hearted of a reader as she is as a writer, to go with her gratefully into this meeting of childlike wonder, existential dread, and that near-constant horniness.
" --Catherine Lacey, Bookforum "This new book--a collection of Heti''s personal diaries, written over the course of a decade, then alphabetized and sheared into hypnotic installments of funny, plaintive, and exhortative prose--shows us how people are. Reading it, one is struck by the awesome continuity of the human mind, the way we''re always turning over the same ideas and questions, but also our naked contradictions." --Jake Nevins, Interview " Alphabetical Diaries shows how a simple sorting technique helps Heti get at the truth of her own life . What emerges, across 26 chapters, is a portrait of a writer carving out her own definition of artistic integrity and truth." --Celine Nguyen, ArtReview "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 at emerges, across 26 chapters, is a portrait of a writer carving out her own definition of artistic integrity and truth." --Celine Nguyen, ArtReview "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 at emerges, across 26 chapters, is a portrait of a writer carving out her own definition of artistic integrity and truth.
" --Celine Nguyen, ArtReview "Each book that Heti has written has pressed further into the possibilities of what fictio.