Alphabetical Diaries

By: Sheila Heti

Narrated by: Kate Berlant

"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."—Vulture on Alphabetical Diaries

"Heti's candid revelations will stir listeners."—AudioFile on Alphabetical Diaries

This program is read by Emmy-nominated comedian, actress, and writer, Kate Berlant.

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

Sheila Heti kept a record of her thoughts over a ten-year period, then arranged the sentences from A to Z. Passionate and reflective, joyful and despairing, these are her alphabetical diaries.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2024 Sheila Heti (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“[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. The emotive nature of Heti's precise language takes center stage . . . 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

"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

I love this book and the narration.

Sheila Heti is genius to have arranged her thoughts in this way. Once you get used to the rhythm and patterns, it becomes more organic and compelling than chronological could ever be. It feels so honest and vulnerable to organize your thoughts like this. Kate Berlant is truly the best possible person to narrate this book. She adds the perfect amount of emotion and clarity to each sentence. I am so grateful to Heti and Berlant for this audiobook.

Audio format amplifies the ruminative experience of/through time. An incredible, must-listen audiobook.

As an audiobook, the unrelenting experience of duration that happens independent of the listeners effort adds a catalyzing component to this already generous, thoughtful, experimental and very successful book. The format amplifies the ruminative experience of/through time.

Reordering chronological prose in alphabetical sequence by beginning letters of sentences takes events of life away from their urgent contexts. You appreciate the contrasting shapes and iterations of the narrator’s speech gestures, such as observing, postulating, condemning, longing, appreciating, overthinking, interrogating, longing, doubting, self-flagellating, celebrating, longing, etc. This gallery of ruminations ends up greater than the sum of its individual parts. They describe/delimit the slipppery, complicated, ever shifting, ever constant shape of human consciousness through time.
It's a Top 3 audiobook for sure.