I didn't actually read the blurb before getting into Crosley's newest book - I've read all of her past fiction & non-fiction, so at this point I'm a bit set to autopilot to pick up whatever she puts out.
When the essays begin with a theft of jewelry - I thought oh no, we're revisting The Clasp, but then she mentions the similarities and wondered if the readership of The Clasp was even big enough for someone to specifically target her.
We then enter a meditation on grief - Crosley's best friend & former colleague commits suicide a month after the theft of her jewelry (entirely unrelated on his end, but a second and much more devastating blow to Crosley).
An excellent, highly personal reflection on loss, how much can we know others, and what to do after part of your world ends.
Thank you to the publisher, via NetGalley, for providing me with an arc for review

I loved her previous book, "I Was Told There Would Be Cake," and was excited to read this one. But this was too slow-moving and just...too much.
Granted, it came at a bad time for me--lost my mom to suicide some years ago and this came to me right around the anniversary of that.
Still, even the quality of the writing was vastly different from previous.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fascinating meditation on loss and friendship, on the surprising things that sustain us. The writing is crisp, engaging, and descriptive. The pacing of the story is effective and clear.

Essayist and novelist Sloane Crosley's Grief Is for People is a bereavement memoir like no other. Heart-wrenching yet witty, it bears a distinctive structure and offers fascinating glimpses into the New York City publishing world.

Crosley's Manhattan apartment was burgled on June 27, 2019--exactly a month before the suicide of her best friend and former boss, Russell, at 52. Throughout the book, the whereabouts of her family jewelry is as much of a mystery as the reason for Russell's death, and investigating the stolen goods in parallel serves as a displacement activity for her. "Grief is for people, not things," she reminds herself, but her grandmother's amber necklace becomes a complex symbol of her synchronous losses.

The relationship with Russell had been almost father-daughter in nature: he was 12 years older and gay; a prankster, Old Hollywood obsessive, and hoarder who hit every flea market looking for antiques. The Connecticut home he kept with his partner was a retreat destination for Vintage Books employees in the early 2000s. "He is my favorite person, the one who somehow sees me both as I want to be seen and as I actually am," Crosley (Cult Classic) writes. While she was making the uneasy move from a publicist job to full-time writing, Russell was her biggest fan.

Ever the literary stylist, Crosley probes the ironies of her situation, and documents her own choices about framing this story. Four years earlier, she had published a novel about pilfered jewelry. In a meta moment, she chides herself for composing in the present tense, as if the future might still be changed. She draws on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's five stages of grief for section headings, and one is broken down further into three "acts." The author's metaphors are always fresh and often funny: "the trauma humps my leg like a dog"; "We each have our lily pads of discontent."

As earnestly as Crosley searches for clues to Russell's mental state preceding his untimely death, she finds no definitive answers. Her only guess was that he feared "The illness of aging as a gay man. The threat of irrelevance, the loss of power, the expansion of indignities." She also ponders whether Russell's career in publicity started to go downhill with the James Frey fiasco. Ultimately, though, she paints suicide as unfathomable.

This sui generis memoir--sting operation meets stage tragedy--is a bittersweet treasure.

Wow, I loved this book! Despite the heavy subject matter, it felt like a conversational, compelling read. Crosley's voice is so powerful and feels like having a deep yet darkly funny conversation with an old friend.

I've been a fan of Crosley's for a while, and though this one is different from her usual work, I loved it all the same. This one deserves a spot right next to Didion's Year of Magical Thinking when it comes to revered grief writing. She writes about some of the feelings of grief that can often make a person feel lonely and isolated in a way that reminds us we are not alone, and that's invaluable.

in 2019, sloane crosley was the target of a robbery. a month later, her dear mentor and friend died by suicide. this is a moving, powerful, and respectful remembrance. it grapples with thorny questions and doesn’t shy away from the ugly sides of grief. gorgeous meditation on grief, loss, love, and searching for answers.

I love Sloane's writing and this memoir was so beautifully done. I read it quickly as it was so immersive, gripping, and raw while still showcasing her trademark humor. A deeply felt read.

I have loved every single one of Sloane Crosley's books so I had admittedly high expectations of this one, and it exceeded all of them.

Two events happen in 2019 that greatly impact Sloane Crosley's life and are the focus of this book. Her apartment is broken in to one day while she is not home and all of her jewelry is stolen. While dealing with the fall out of this, her best friend and former boss dies by suicide.

This book is so heartbreaking while being so life affirming and overall so well written. The writing is beautiful, there were so many passages I wanted to save so I could re-read them again and again.

This is certainly not an easy read since it deals with grief and mourning, but I was so engrossed that I found myself thinking about it all the time and just wanting to get back to it.

I highly recommend this book, as well as Sloane Crosley's previous books, to everyone -- just be ready for a heavy yet lovely read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!

I rarely give memoirs less than 5 stars because I truly respect author's telling their stories. Grief is for People focuses on Sloane Crosley's loss of one of her close friends, Richard, to suicide.

For me, I found the writing hard to follow. The timeline jumps around without clear transitions which made it a little confusing. Besides the writing, I found the book to be too long By the middle of the book, I had lost interest as it felt a bit repetitive.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Staus, and Giroux for an advanced copy of this memoir in exchange for my honest review. It will be published on March 27th, 2024.

Thanks to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC!

I adored this! Any book on grief is inherently an exercise in failure, and the best it can do is fail meaningfully. Sloane Crosley essentially builds "Grief is for People" around this understanding, and the result is a heart-rending exploration of loss.

Rather than playing into the trope of death as earth-shattering devastation, Crosley concentrates on the way it serrates the margins of life, noting experiences like someone “multitasking a condolence call” in the wake of her loss. Grief might be a universal experience, but nobody knows how to handle it, and to pretend otherwise would be disingenuous.

Likewise, this attention to the “smallness” of loss influences the book’s framing device—Crosley’s desperate attempts to reclaim stolen jewelry. This approach prevents the book from succumbing to any clichés about the five stages of grief or lessons learned through loss. Instead, it creates space to explore the way our distractions take on new meaning when we are emotionally unmoored.

Crosley’s depiction of the central relationship is among the best examinations of platonic intimacy I have ever read. Russell—her deceased friend—is given the dignity of being a complicated and wonderful and often sort of horrible person. Many books of this ilk tend to deify or romanticize the dead, but "Grief is for People" is all the more beautiful because it refuses to do so. There’s tenderness here because Crosley’s love treats him as a whole person. She never sugarcoats his behavior, but she is compassionate about why he behaved the way he did. Furthermore, her honesty allows her to reflect fully on suicide and its relational implications. There’s anger, confusion, understanding, and grace in how she writes about the subject.

Joan Didion is referenced several times throughout, and this book feels like a spiritual successor to her work in many ways. If you enjoy "The Year of Magical Thinking," this builds on those sensibilities in a way that resonates more in the 2020s. The tone is warm and funny without the kind of biting cynicism we often see in books like this. If there are any critiques to be made, they are reflective of the genre more than the book itself. As the final third of the memoir shifts into Crosley’s experience during COVID, the razor-sharp focus is replaced—albeit briefly—by a kind of ambling uncertainty. Whereas most of the book interrogates the impossibility of narrative in loss, this section seems to resist it a bit. It does not weaken the book in any substantial way, but there are maybe 20-30 pages that feel inconsequential.

Overall, though, this is one of my favorite memoirs in quite a while, and it made me want to go back and read the author’s other books.

This book rang every bell for me. As a widow for 4 years and having lost my mumma 2 1/2 years ago, now having a manageable but incurable genetic illness, grief rules my life. This book was funny yet incredibly sad. Poignant yet unbelievably raw. I could relate to the grief aspect throughout. Well written.

In Grief is for People, Sloane Crosley begins to conflate the death of her best friend with the theft of her grandmother's jewelry. Crosley's experience is firmly rooted within reality, while managing to diverge from it. It feels like Crosley is coming to terms with her friend's death in realtime. It is a deep meditation on friendship, loss, and how well we really know the people in our lives. It is a tribute to her friend, considering his death by suicide with grace and kindness, while also considering his faults. It's a sad and heartfelt book--a beautifully written, relatable, sincere, and realistic portrait of loss.

Sloane Crosley is one of my favorite writers, so I was thrilled to get an e-galley of her latest, even though I knew that the topic, grief, would be difficult for me. And the fact that it's grief for a death by suicide is going to be tough for some folks, but this book is worth it. The author contrasts the grief over lost things (all her jewelry was taken in a home invasion robbery) to the loss of her best friend a month later, and there are so many relatable moments in her meditations on each. I highlighted a lot, but this one stuck with me:

"Alas, as the Italian author Natalia Ginzburg wrote, 'You cannot hope to console yourself for your grief by writing. You cannot deceive yourself by hoping for caresses and lullabies from your vocation.' What you *can* do is be careful with other people. Human beings are solid things made out of delicate materials. Perhaps this is why we like jewelry as much as we do, because jewelry is our inverse--delicate things made out of solid materials."

And one more:
"We all have something we're trying to fend off. The question is how big and with what?"

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

A beautiful written and reflective memoir that blends Sloane Crosley's signature sense of humor with crushing sadness as she reflects on a robbery in her own apartment and the suicide of her close friend and mentor. Highly recommend for those looking for a thoughtful read about how unfathomable loss can be, and how to live with it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

I really like Sloane Crosley's writing, so I was thrilled to get a chance to read her latest collection of essays. Crosley has a break in at her apartment and her jewelry stolen a month before her best friend dies. She processes her grief and loss over both things over the course of this book.

It started strong for me, but then felt really long and repetitive. Grief is long, so may be that was the point. I think this could have worked better as an article vs a full book. Strong writing throughout.

Thank you for the advanced reader copy Netgalley & Farrar, Straus and Giroux, MCD.

Tense, visceral, and completely gripping.

I was especially enthralled during the first half when we learn about Sloane’s relationship with Russell and witness Sloane’s determination to find out who stole her jewelry and how she could possibly get it back. This was my first read by this author and I enjoyed her writing style and storytelling abilities - she infuses humor into this deeply sad yet celebratory account of her friendship with Russell.

Thank you very much to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy.

grief is for people, crosley’s first memoir, is the story of the loss of her close friend and former boss, as well as the burglary of her apt that happened the month prior to the death. crosley starts the memoir discussing the theme of loss, the loss of her jewelry from her home and her space, but really this event is a precursor to the tragedy of losing someone so close to you.

i respect crosley so much for releasing this memoir on a public stage to be reviewed and read by the public. this memoir describes the simple moments of grief, such as avoiding a place you visited with that person, to the bigger sensations of not knowing how you can move on after these losses.

as a huge memoir fan in general, this one is truly a gem and i recommend it to everyone.

overall: 4⭐️

I've never read a book on grief that made me feel like someone else had a relationship with grief that comes close to mine, but Sloane Crosley's new book made me feel seen -- uncomfortably so at times, but seen nevertheless. I had to put the book aside multiple times during my reading to cry, wondering how some pixels on a screen could so effectively reactivate my feelings and remind me what it feels like when the grief is fresh, what it feels like to be trying to process the feelings while not wanting to process the feelings because processing them means my person is really gone. It's a beautiful, painful book, and I'll be getting a physical copy ASAP for my personal library.

This is the third Sloane Crosley book I've read--also my first non-fiction and my favorite of the bunch. With the others, I liked the concept/early pages but didn't feel like they fully coalesced. This one does.

Crosley loses her jewelry to a robbery, best friend to suicide, and life as she knows it to the pandemic in less than a year. The grief piles up. It's not linear or even logical.

The suicide of a loved one can make you feel powerless. If there was anything you could have done (there wasn't), that time is past. Crosley pours her grief into a monomaniacal search for her stolen family heirlooms that her late friend so admired, feeling like it will bring part of him back but knowing it won't. Suicides make detectives of everyone left in their wake. Were there hints? A cry for help that I missed?

Grieving is a selfish act--you cannot be fully present for others when you are so fully focused on just surviving another day with an insurmountable weight on your back. "Time does not heal all wounds. Time does not heal any wounds," Crosley writes, "Time only pushes wounds aside. Regular life becomes insistent and crowds out the loss." But when the losses compound and the world stops spinning as everyone huddles indoors to ward off a deadly virus, there is no escaping the suffocation of mourning.