Sloane Crosley

In the fall of 2019, Sloane Crosley's jewelry is stolen during a break-in at her apartment; a month later, her former boss and best friend Russell dies by suicide; a few months after that, a pandemic spreads across the globe, and New York empties, becoming eerily quiet. In this memoir, Crosley grapples with these events, the first two of which especially are tangled together, "bookends" of loss. Her writing is sharp as always.

Quotes

And no one is obliged to learn something from loss. (5)

You show more become numb when you swallow too much sadness at once. (25)

Life needs volunteers or else it will start calling on people at random. (32)

Grief is for people, not things. (34)

It's not such a nice world. Bad things happen. Sometimes they happen all at once. (38)

PTSD employs a math opposite to that of denial: Instead of your brain convincing itself that nothing has happened, it convinces itself everything has and still is happening. (48)

To mourn the death of a friend is to feel as if you are walking around with a vase, knowing you have to set it down but nowhere is obvious. (78)

Because what is the idea that something exists, even if you can't see it [object permanence], if not the very definition of faith? (81)

Russell could not stomach sadness but he could not stomach earnestness either. (108)

Heavy is the enchantment of places you know you will never see again. (116)

If a rising tide lifts all boats, a whirlpool pulls them all to the bottom. (143)

Perhaps this is the plainest definition of anxiety: mourning what isn't gone yet. Anxiety is an ever-present stage of grief, a shadow attached to the heels of its more famous siblings. (155)

The anxiety may have been a blanket but the sadness was a knife. (168)

How do I keep you buried and keep you with me at the same time? (185) show less

Crosley's memoir about the death of her friend and burglary of her home is honest, bitter, angry, and heartbreaking. I loved that she didn't shy away from the hard parts of grief. She didn't wrap it up in a tidy bow and give a life lesson at the end. There are layers of pain when it comes to missing someone, being angry they are gone, and feeling guilty for your life continuing. Grief is not simple. This is a painful book, full of her scorn for those around her, but it's a truthful one.

TW show more Suicide show less

“Grief is for People” is a complex book in many ways. It’s a book about grief, the grief the author experiences because of the death by suicide of perhaps her closest friend, a man who started as her boss in the publishing industry and later became more a friend than a work colleague. The book is a parallel story line telling the story of her relationship with book publicist Russell Perreault while at the same time recounting the story of her apartment break in while she was gone when show more she lost her jewelry, much of it family heirlooms from family members she loved and at least one she hated. Working through these traumas makes up the bulk of this short book. The writing is typical of anything Sloane Crosley writes: masterful. If you enjoy good, out of the box writing, this book will appeal. And even though it’s about loss, it never becomes maudlin. In fact, just as Crosley goes to the edge of maudlin, she turns to clever comedy to pull herself (and her reader) out of a funk. It’s a very interesting book, one that came be easily read in one or two sittings. show less

I like Sloane Crosley's style of writing, it's so poetic yet witty and she mentions all the little quirks that we see around us but don't really pay attention too. It was a delight reading through all her descriptions of people and things.
I also enjoyed the plot - meeting ghosts of your past one by one sounds horrifying; and from the eyes of Lola, it sounds even worse. Although there were points where I felt like the story was dragging a bit (hence the 3 stars), I was hooked until the end.

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The past is too deep a hole to be crowded out by the present

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