Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

A little over a decade ago, Sheila Hetithe award-winning author of a string of modern classics includingHow Should a Person Be?,Motherhood, andPure Colourbegan looking back at the diaries she'd kept over the previous ten years, searching for signs of deeper change inside herself. She loaded all 500,000 words of her journals into Microsoft Excel, to order the sentences alphabetically and seek out patterns and repetitions. How many times had she written, "I hate him," for example? With the sentences untethered from the narrative of her diaries, she started to see herselfand the Selfin a new way: assomething quite solid, anchored by shockingly few characteristic preoccupations. Returning to the project over the years, something more universal and novelistic emerged.

Alphabetical Diariesis the sublime and probing resultone that rises to the heights of artistry and insight for which Heti is rightfully acclaimed.(From Knopf Canada)

Hetiis a noted Canadian playwright and author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction whose work has been translated in over a dozen languages. Her play All Our Happy Days are Stupid appeared on stages in New York and Toronto and her bookHow Should a Person Be?was a New York Times Notable Book. Her novelMotherhoodwas on the shortlist for the 2018Scotiabank Giller Prize.