Loved the beginnning of this one...I was sucked into Crosley's writing about the burglary of her house. I loved how she represented her relationship with her friend, and I felt such sadness upon his suicide. But as she dove deeper into the grieving process, her writing becamse less engaging and I had a hard time caring...which in a story about grief and suicide, just didn't feel good to me. I wanted more explorations of how her life changed by this loss. Also, after awhile, the connection to her lost jewelry and her best friend felt a little forced.

I love a good memoir, especially when it touches upon sensitive subjects. I am so thankful to FSG Books, Sloane Crosley, and Netgalley for granting me physical and digital access to this book before it hits shelves on February 27, 2024.

If Sloane writes it, imma read it.

I needed this book more than I knew. While our circumstances coming to grief are vastly different - Crosley lost a friend to suicide and I lost my mom to a long illness - I felt a cathartic relief seeing my feelings and thoughts presented back to me.

Grief is often compounded and naturally takes on all forms of expression. We are led through the processing of Crosley’s feelings as she handles a robbery, death of her friend, and then (why the hell not, let’s throw it on) a global pandemic.

“You can ignore grief. You push it around your plate. But you can’t give it away.”

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

CW/TW: suicide, grief, theft, home invasion

Grief Is for People is a frank and honest depiction of grief following the loss of an overwhelming force of a friend. It teeters between Sloane's journey dealing with the consequences of her apartment being broken into while also navigating her journey of grief in regards to her friend/mentor, Russell. Throughout the memoir she also touches on anecdotes in her friendship, with a unique and special emphasis on their work in the publishing industry during the 2000s. This is not treated as an ode to friendship - but rather showcases the raw authenticity and complexities of grief when you are not a partner, parent, nor child of the one you have lost. It showcases the raw authenticity and complexities of Russell throughout his life as she knew him. This is not a lyrical, poetically charged memoir. Rather, it is direct and real and features some sharply candid lines that will certainly resonate.

Grief is for People is a poignant memoir from best selling author Sloane Crosley. A long-time colleague and best friend is lost to suicide, and Sloane struggles not only understand why, but how to move forward. There is a parallel story of loss in this book, as Sloane is the victim of burglarly shortly before her friend dies. As distressing as the burglary is, Sloane reminds us that indeed, true grief is for people.

This bright, bracing, beautiful book—I treasure it. And I marvel at Sloane Crosley’s courage and candor, her wit, too, of course, I legitimately chortled—chortled out loud?!—but more than any of that I admire her willingness to do all she could to show us this love, this friendship, this cavernous loss and the person who left her with it, the person he was before that, too, the person he was to her. The insurmountable not-knowing that comes with loving anyone, with loss, and that comes at another frequency, as a brick wall, with suicide. To face that and still ask, still reach, still wonder—
“I still want to know where everything I loved has gone and why.”

Sloan Crosley's latest book is a departure from her usual humor-fueled work. In this memoir, she writes about the suicide of a dear friend that occurred around the same time as her apartment was burglarized. As Crosley considers the loss of meaningful items that were stolen and her friend's death, she admits "grief is for people" and proceeds to give readers an intimate look at her own mourning.

The juxtaposition of the burglary and the passing of her friend didn't always make sense to me. I understand what Crosley was trying to say about loss, but the comparison sometimes felt forced. As for what I enjoyed, I loved the inside look at her friendship with the man she lost, and I especially appreciated her stories about their behind-the-scenes jobs in publishing.

Like anyone would, Crosley wonders what signs she missed and if she could have done more to help her friend. This memoir has many poignant moments, but Crosley's trademark wit remains. Grief Is for People could be a balm for those who have lost someone to suicide and are wondering how to pick up the pieces of their life.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book.

I am not a fan of Crosley's fiction. This memoir about her grief after a colleague and close friend dies by suicide is much better than her fiction. I was fully invested in the book for more than half of it. The end slowed down a lot and I lost interest but that is probably more a reflection of the process of grieving than it is about the book or the writing.

Wow. I don't know how to describe this book because I'm still processing it. I was captivated by the two stories and Crosley's seamless blending between the two. It's crazy to say that I also feel like I lost Russell, in a way, because of the picture she painted of him. We all have someone in our lives like that and we also have hyperfixated on the wrong thing following a tragedy.

I'll be honest. I'd tried reading Crosley's work before and just couldn't relax into it for some reason. I'm glad I read this book because I loved her writing here. Hope this is studied in memoir classes for ages.

A memoir about the loss of her best friend, this book takes a look at several forms of loss and the grief we experience. Jewelry stolen from her apartment, life interrupted because of the pandemic, she walks us through her loss of each with humor, and stunning writing. I think we all hope to have the kind of mentorship and friendship that she describes in this book. Relatable and sincere, this was my first time reading this author and I will definitely go back to her previous work.

This book left me wanting to run to pick up everything by Joan Didion.

It’s a gray, rainy day here. The perfect day to sit and think about grief and loss and friendship.

This was genuinely moving and beautifully written! I loved Sloane Crosley's first novel The Clasp and I've enjoyed some of her books of essays. In this memoir, Crosley contends with the dual losses of her beloved jewelry collection (her NYC apartment was robbed on June 27, 2019) and the death of her closest friend Russell by suicide exactly one month later on July 27, 2019. That's not to say at all that Crosley equates the two in her memoir but rather that these two distinct experiences of loss weave themselves together in her life — and, of course, as a narrative device for the memoir. I read this entire book in a day; it's fast paced, clever, and at moments, genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. It's hard to imagine that a memoir about loss would make me laugh out loud, but Crosley's writing did. Her writing is also profound without being grandiose or overdone; she makes keen observations about her experiences of loss that are both specific and relatable. I also love that Crosley incorporated references to some of Russell's most beloved artists into the book; as a theater lover, I was particularly struck that Crosley included lyrics from Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods in the epigraph and also references Sondheim on other occasions. Crosley offers up a glimpse into her own humanity and the deeply human, personal experience of loss, but she also does so with her own particular flair and deliciously clever writing.

A beautiful tribute to a friend, a mentor, and a complicated figure. Crosley really captures what it's like to love someone who is flawed. To be angry, and sad, and confused at the loss all at once. To equate two very different kinds of loss in your mind, to feel feel agreived in a similar way, almost as a protection. I loved this collection, which is full of gems of wisdom, humor in the face of grief, and heartfelt writing.

A heavy memoir from a much beloved writer. Glimpses of her essay style here with several threads interwoven.

4.5⭐️

I’ve been a fan of Sloane Crosley’s writing since her first collection I WAS TOLD THERE WOULD BE CAKE was released in 2008 when I was in my 30s working in NYC. Grief is for People is Crosby’s memoir about loss, love, memory and living with loss. Crosley’s NYC apartment gets broken into and her grandmother’s jewelry is stolen. While she didn’t particularly like her grandmother, the loss of these things that held her family’s history was jarring — on top of the physical invasion into her home. A month later her friend and mentor Richard takes his life by suicide.

Crosley reflects on these events as she deals with the trauma and feelings that emerge. I can’t really describe this book in a way that does it justice because it is so unique. It was refreshing to hear about a mentorship/friendship between a man and woman in the publishing industry. Along with that, I loved the inside look at the publishing industry, especially the whole James Frey incident — oh I remember that one!

I binged this book and you should too.


Thank you to #netgalley and #fsg for an advanced e-arc in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

“Denial is humankind’s specialty, our handy aversion. We are so allergic to our own mortality; we’ll do anything to make it not so.”

Grief is for People is one of the most heartbreaking books I’ve read and yet I would recommend it to most who have experienced heavy grief in their life (so, most people). Crosley is specifically writing through the stages of grief after her best friend dies by suicide, but I think it has sentiments that feel relatable even if you have not lost someone to suicide.

It’s a book you need to be in the right headspace for, and for anyone with a history of suicide I would recommend proceeding with caution. I nevertheless found the writing to be powerful and raw, painting a portrait of how it feels to be left behind after losing someone you love.

I absolutely loved GRIEF IS FOR PEOPLE. Sloane Crosley writes her way through losses of many shapes and sizes, paramount among them, the suicide of one of her closest friends Russell Perreault. She wittily meanders through a maze of feeling and wondering, reconnaissance missions towards understanding and meaning-making, and a trove of memories of friendship, hard work, and some good-old growing-up (of people and world).

“He liked to speak of how one should be on the side of the bygone, otherwise people forget too easily, of how the dead, because they are dead, are more perfect. No one blinks at nihilism when it’s disguised as good taste. It is only now that Russell is gone that I can see how poisonous such obsessions are for a person who makes the dead more alive than the living, a person in grave danger of joining their ranks.”

Having noticed this tendency of her beloved friend and former colleague, Crosley does not err by writing eulogy. She asks hard questions and humanizes the many possible hard answers. She examines loss and becoming from many angles and does not shy from those that might be less flattering. She conjures complicated lives and sits in the messiness. And Crosley does it all with language that is as funny as it is serious and seriously thought-provoking. A masterclass in the volatility, mystery, pain, and beauty of grief. An act of many kinds of generosity.

I found so much meaning in being granted access to Crosley’s grieving mind, where losing and missing proved generative. I wish she could have been spared these experiences, but GRIEF IS FOR PEOPLE was a joy to read, a gift. I feel grateful for this book and I highly highly recommend!!

Thank you @netgalley and @fsgbooks for the digital copy!! GRIEF IS FOR PEOPLE comes out on February 27 💜

Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley is a memoir about the loss of her best friend to suicide. This was a fantastic book about the way grief invades every aspect of our lives and changes how we think. Crosley does mention Joan Didion's writing throughout the book and this did remind me a lot of The Year of Magical Thinking.
This was a quick read at only 208 pages, but it is so powerful and so memorable. The writing is incredibly raw and real. Crosley doesn't hold anything back and brings the reader into that time period and how she was feeling.

I found Grief Is for People to be captivating, honest, and unlike any other memoir about grief that I’ve read. Crosley explores grief through interweaving three significant events in her life that occurred in a relatively short time span (a theft, the death of her close friend by suicide, and the pandemic hitting NYC). While it is obviously about Crosley’s specific experiences, anyone who has experienced sudden loss will find parts of their experiences in it as well.

There were so many parts of this book that resonated with me: finding connections between unrelated events, finding significance in small details or objects, the all-consuming nature of grief, the what-ifs, and how some losses are socially validated while others are barely acknowledged as true loss.

While the subject matter is already impactful, the language and style really drives it all home. I found myself highlighting several passages that perfectly captured a concept or emotion. If you’re a fan of memoirs or of the author, this is a must-read.

*Thank you to NetGalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, MCD, and Sloane Crosley, for the opportunity to read a free eARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.*

I've read at least one other Sloane Crosley memoir - I believe her first one from 2008 or so. She just keeps getting better and this book is a prime example of that.

Grief Is for People is the story of Sloane and her closest friend, also her boss, at Vintage Books and his sudden death. This book, I'm assuming will have trigger warnings for its content. I won't go into detail here about the nature of Russell's death, but it is sudden and before his time.

Sloane does such a wonderful job of weaving in a secondary story of a break in to her apartment with the death of her friend, juxtaposing and connecting the two in her very wry and sometimes outright comedic voice.

I really related to her journey through grief as I have also lost some loved ones suddenly.

"And no one is obliged to learn anything from loss. This is a horrible thing we do to the newly stricken, encouraging them to remember the good times while they're still in the fetal position."

Grief Is for People follows Crosley in the aftermath of a home robbery as well as the loss of a close friend. I have never read a book that so well incapsulates grief/loss in a way that is familiar and frustrating. Crosley's writing style makes this book work so well if you've never read her work, I'd highly recommend starting with this one.