"Heti has cited “The Hills,” the bygone MTV show about young people in Los Angeles, as one of the primary influences on “How Should a Person Be?” She tried to make Margaux and Sheila more like the girls on that show “than characters in a book,” she told one interviewer, and, indeed, the yellow-dress incident might have fit right into the series. More broadly, though, the novel shares with much reality television a kind of episodic aimlessness, and a focus on young, self-­involved characters who spend a lot of time thinking about how they look to other people."