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Alphabetical Diaries Hardcover – February 6, 2024

4.0 out of 5 stars 80 ratings

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Named a Recommended Read of the Year by The New Yorker and aNew York Times Critics Top Book of the Year
One of The Los Angeles Times's 15 Best Books of the Year
One of The New Statesman's 20 Best Books of the Year
An
Electric Literature and Literary Hub Best Nonfiction Book of the Year

A thrilling confessional from the award-winning, beloved author of Pure Colour.

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.

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From the Publisher

Praise for Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

Alphabetical Diaries Sheila Heti

Alphabetical Diaries Sheila Heti

Alphabetical Diaries Sheila Heti Zadie Smith quote

Alphabetical Diaries Sheila Heti Dwight Garner quote

Alphabetical Diaries Sheila Heti Lynn Steger Strong quote

Alphabetical Diaries Sheila Heti Publisher's Weekly quote

Alphabetical Diaries Sheila Heti Alice Martin quote

Alphabetical Diaries Sheila Heti Zeja Z. Copes quote

Alphabetical Diaries Sheila Heti Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

Review

“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 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] is in how broadly human and carefully constructed it also feels . . . Something elemental, true and human, begins to form. There’s a particular thrill in feeling like a new sense of narrative is accruing inside of you as well.”
―Lynn Steger Strong, Los Angeles Times

"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

“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.”
―William Earl, Variety

“I found reading
Alphabetical Diaries to be a profound experience . . . There is something of Anaïs Nin’s journals in Alphabetical Diaries, and of Iris Murdoch’s letters, and of Edna O’Brien’s memoirs. Something locked-in and bristling. Heti is wrestling openly with the things that matter.”
―Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

“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.”
―Lauren Puckett-Pope, Elle

“The resulting book is exhilarating: both intimate and withholding, repetitive and generative, undeniably self-centred and yet moving beyond the self.”
―Anna Leszkiewicz, New Statesman

“The alphabetised sentences give the book momentum and entertaining accidents of language create intriguing micro-stories on every page . . . Readers who enjoy Heti’s fiction should be enthralled. The picture of a committed, inventive, sincere writer and the times she lives in, which emerges from this experiment, is fascinating.”
―Max Liu, iNews

“One of the freshest, funniest and most ingenious humans writing today . . . one of our best living authors.”
―Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

“Playful yet disciplined . . . [Heti] knows how to engage the mundane details of life with curiosity and thoughtfulness."
―Zeja Z. Copes, Booklist

[An] arresting literary experiment . . . What the book lacks in traditional narrative structure, Heti supplements with evocative snapshots of life, detailing broken love affairs, mediocre meals, and professional triumphs with the controlled chaos of a late-night thought spiral. She juxtaposes the mundane (‘My book will be done this year!’) and the profound (‘I wonder if I wanted to be a writer because nobody ever told me the truth’). The arcs of friendships and romantic relationships are sliced up and remixed, raising subtextual questions about the linearity of time and the nature of change.”
Publisher’s Weekly

“While it might be the repetition that immediately catches the eye, it's Heti’s lists’ slight differences that give them resonance: ‘But love can endure. But love is not enough.’ This mutability, likely true of most diaries--and most people's internal lives--is put on display here through the compression of time, which allows almost every sentence to read like a profound truth, only to have the next sentence complicate it. . . .
A thought-provoking experiment in self-reflection and prose, Alphabetical Diaries is perhaps Sheila Heti's most intimate and most universal book yet.
―Alice Martin, Shelf Awareness

"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

"I'll read anything Sheila Heti writes."
―Lauren Oyler, author of Fake Accounts

"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

About the Author

Sheila Heti is the author of eleven books, including the novels Pure Colour, Motherhood,and How Should a Person Be?, which New York deemed one of the "New Classics" of the twenty-first century. She was named one of the "New Vanguard" by the New York Times book critics, who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a top book of 2018. Her books have been translated into twenty-four languages. She lives in Toronto.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux (February 6, 2024)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374610789
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374610784
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 0.75 x 8.56 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 out of 5 stars 80 ratings

About the author

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Sheila Heti
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Sheila Heti is the author of eight books, including the critically acclaimed "How Should a Person Be?" and the New York Times Bestseller, "Women in Clothes" (edited with Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton). She is the former interviews editor at The Believer magazine, and has been published in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, n+1, The London Review of Books, and more. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages. She lives in Toronto.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
80 global ratings

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5 out of 5 stars
I love that this book exists
I just love that this book exists. Heti has taken their journals through the years and placed each sentence in ALPHABETICAL ORDER. It’s chaotic but cohesive at the same time. Our author has put such a lovely focus on each sentence so they all feel like little jewels on their own. I love how you’ll read two sentences that say almost the exact same thing and then the next two sentences completely contradict the first two. It’s wonderful. It truly does feel like being inside the jumble of someone’s mind, talking about the big things and the mundane ones all mixed in together. This is not going to be for everyone, but a premise this kooky is always going to be up my alley.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2024
    I have a question: Does every other book reviewer on Amazon sit down the minute they receive a new book and read it straight through and then write a witty and incisive review which conveys accurately to the reader the gist as well as the quality of the book reviewed? Or am I the only one?
    That having been said, this book was meant for me. My short term memory is not what it once was and to have each sentence stand alone with its own unique charm (or disgust or admiration or whatever) is a veritable blessing. I only wish I knew a bit more about her repeating cast of characters. They appear and reappear across the pages randomly, so they take shape like a Chuck Close painting.
    If E-Z are anything like A-D, I can’t wait.
    4 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2024
    A really amazing exposition of how we use language, at times thrilling, shocking and sad.
  • Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2024
    I love the idea behind the material but not the contents. There are far better diaries out there, I know. This book reminded me why I should stop relying on social media for my book choices. Time is wealth.
    One person found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2024
    I wanted to like this, but half way thru I gave up. No continuity to follow except characters were re-mentioned in chapters. Not sure what the point was except the style in which she wrote, but I didn't see how it "worked" as a story. She was all over the place in her moods. Perhaps reader error......but it went over my head.
    2 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2024
    I just love that this book exists.

    Heti has taken their journals through the years and placed each sentence in ALPHABETICAL ORDER.

    It’s chaotic but cohesive at the same time.

    Our author has put such a lovely focus on each sentence so they all feel like little jewels on their own.

    I love how you’ll read two sentences that say almost the exact same thing and then the next two sentences completely contradict the first two. It’s wonderful.

    It truly does feel like being inside the jumble of someone’s mind, talking about the big things and the mundane ones all mixed in together.

    This is not going to be for everyone, but a premise this kooky is always going to be up my alley.
    Customer image
    5.0 out of 5 stars
    I love that this book exists

    Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2024
    I just love that this book exists.

    Heti has taken their journals through the years and placed each sentence in ALPHABETICAL ORDER.

    It’s chaotic but cohesive at the same time.

    Our author has put such a lovely focus on each sentence so they all feel like little jewels on their own.

    I love how you’ll read two sentences that say almost the exact same thing and then the next two sentences completely contradict the first two. It’s wonderful.

    It truly does feel like being inside the jumble of someone’s mind, talking about the big things and the mundane ones all mixed in together.

    This is not going to be for everyone, but a premise this kooky is always going to be up my alley.
    Images in this review
    Customer image
  • Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2024
    This was such an interesting read. Whereas stories are usually told chronologically, this story was told alphabetically... giving the reader a complete portrait of the author, but not pinned to any one moment in time. For those who complain that everything's been done before, I urge you to read Alphabetical Diaries because it's never been done like this. Inventive, interesting, experimental... I was blown away.
    7 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2024
    The book ends with "zzzzzzz". Yours not hers. Narcissism isn't all it's cracked up to be.
    4 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2024
    Title and Author: Alphabet Diaries by Sheila Heti
    Overall Grade: C+
    Narration: C
    Depth and Topics covered: B
    Writing: C (hard to judge since it was alphabetized journal sentences, and this did not work for me to follow the author's life)
    Best Aspect: The original idea of alphabetizing a journal.
    Worst Aspect: The narrator made me often feel this was a dramatic novel and the fact the format didn’t allow me to follow the stories accurately.
    5 people found this helpful
    Report

Top reviews from other countries

  • Dudleian
    5.0 out of 5 stars Clever idea delivers interesting results
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2024
    Alphabetising the entries in her diary gives Heti some remarkable chance effects. The past comes before the present, the "he" in one sentence in a paragraph is by no means the same "he" as that in any other sentence in the paragraph. You get fun juxtapositions where an anguished existential musing is followed by "I need to buy an external hard drive." And so on. It should be an incoherent read, but Heti has (I'm guessing) done a remarkable job of choosing which sentences to leave out and which to leave in. It works and is not a hard read. I even got stopped in my tracks a couple of times ("Art is not essential, love is essential..."). The repetition of the initial word or phrase in a sentence sometimes makes a passage incantatory ("Because... Because... Because... Because... ") or even poetic.

    The thing about a non alphabetised diary is that it often ends with a significant event in the life of a diary keeper, whereas in an alphabetical diary you end on an entry about Zadie Smith.
  • Cass
    3.0 out of 5 stars A serious read
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 12, 2024
    Not as interesting as I hoped. Plainly written and rather self conscious. I may look at it again to try to find out why I searched it out.
  • Ayanda
    1.0 out of 5 stars Don’t read this book
    Reviewed in Canada on March 5, 2025
    Genuinely a waste of time.
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, clever, funny, strange...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2024
    The ideas is simple enough, take all your old diary entries and arrange them alphabetically. They conjure up odd associations, the reader makes all kinds of connectives between different parts as familiar names reappear from time to time. The excerpts are frank, often sexually, but by turn profound and inane. I loved it. Every bit. I can't quite think of anything quite like it either. If you like contemporary women's autofiction this could be for you.
    Customer image
    Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars
    Wonderful, clever, funny, strange...

    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2024
    The ideas is simple enough, take all your old diary entries and arrange them alphabetically. They conjure up odd associations, the reader makes all kinds of connectives between different parts as familiar names reappear from time to time. The excerpts are frank, often sexually, but by turn profound and inane. I loved it. Every bit. I can't quite think of anything quite like it either. If you like contemporary women's autofiction this could be for you.
    Images in this review
    Customer imageCustomer image
  • Rebecca
    5.0 out of 5 stars Unexpected and joyful
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2024
    The kindle version of this book works really well, and mine is now full of highlights. The joy of this book is in the unexpected juxtapositions and the frequent humour caused by putting the 'narrative' together purely alphabetically.