Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2024
208 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
Disarmingly witty and poignant, Sloane Crosley's memoir explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of her closest friend.
Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and surprisingly suspenseful portrait of friendship, and a book about loss packed with verve for life. Sloane Crosley is one of our most renowned observers of contemporary behavior, and now the pathos that has been ever present in her trademark wit is on full display. After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in friends, philosophy, and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief.
For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together as they navigated the corridors of office life, the literary world, and the dramatic cultural shifts in New York City. One day, while Russell is still alive, Sloane's apartment is broken into. Along with her most prized possessions, the thief makes off with her sense of security, leaving a mystery in its place.
When Russell dies exactly one month later, his suicide propels her on a wild quest to right the unrightable, to explore what constitutes family and possession as the city itself faces the staggering toll brought on by the pandemic.
Crosley's search for truth is frank, darkly funny, and gilded with a resounding empathy. Upending the "grief memoir," Grief Is for People is the category-defying story of the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it. A modern elegy, it rises precisely to console and challenge our notions of mourning during these grief-stricken times.
"Not only a joy to read, but also a respectful and philosophical work ... A sharp narrative that finds commonality in the dislocation brought on by these events ... A warm remembrance sure to resonate with anyone who has experienced loss ... Marvelously tender."
―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"In this aching meditation on loss and friendship, essayist and novelist Crosley eulogizes her late literary mentor and best friend against the backdrop of the high-pressure publishing industry...Her characteristically whip-smart prose takes on a newly introspective quality as she reinvigorates dusty publishing memoir tropes and captures the minutiae of a complicated friendship with humor and heart. This is a must-read."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Novelist and essayist Crosley is a tightrope writer of devastating wit and plain devastation, a balancing act no doubt requiring even more muscle in this memoir of her grief...This is a searching, impassioned, cathartic, and loving elegy."
—Booklist (starred review)
"Crosley wields her wit and commands all of your attention..."
―Esquire
"[Crosley] has that rare ability to treat scrapes with sardonic humor and inject serious subjects with levity and hijinks with real feeling ― a sort of unlicensed nurse to our souls."
―NPR
"In this vivid, and bitingly funny account, Sloane Crosley exposes the magical thinking and murk that follow a friend's suicide. Crosley's prose is honest, lucid, and always surprising; I can't imagine a better companion to guide us through the pain of losing a friend. A painful and necessary book; I will be keeping it close for years to come."
―Meghan O'Rourke, author of The Invisible Kingdom
"I have come to rely on Sloane Crosley for her oyster knife humor, bourbon hot observation, and indelible portraits of how we live with each other. Grief Is For People is about how we live without the ones we love. Crosley brings her whole self to this memoir―her gifts, her flaws, her intellect, her wit and emotion. She loves hard, grieves hard, and writes with the beauty and urgency of a white hot star. I wish I didn't 'get' this book as much as I do but Grief Is for People is the book I didn't know I needed to read."
―Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
"Is it wrong to say that a memoir about loss and grieving is fun to read? If so, I'm in trouble, because I enjoyed every word of this book. I also ached and suffered along with Crosley: Her portrait of mourning after the suicide of her best friend is gutting and deeply engaging."
―Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief
This information about Grief Is for People was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sloane Crosley is the author of the New York Times bestselling essay collections, I Was Told There'd Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor) and How Did You Get This Number, as well as Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor) and the bestselling novel, The Clasp. She served as editor of The Best American Travel Writing series and is featured in the Library of America's 50 Funniest American Writers, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Phillip Lopate's The Contemporary American Essay and others. She was the inaugural columnist for the New York Times Op-Ed "Townies" series, a contributing editor at Interview Magazine, and a columnist for the Village Voice, Vanity Fair, the Independent, Black Book, Departures and the New York...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Sloane Crosley's Website
Name Pronunciation
Sloane Crosley: slown CRAHZ-lee
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