A sad but witty book about theft and grief. Poor Crosley really went through it! I don't often see books about mourning a friend so it appealed to me. For many people friends are closer than relatives and grief is so complicated. The only issue i had was that her friend seemed to be rather unpleasant and complaints were made against him about his behavior (?) and that seemed a little glossed over. I would have liked more about what it was like being friends with a complicated man in that aspect.

For some reason, unbeknownst to me, I always find myself gravitating towards books that deal with grief.

It might be because grief, in its purest form, is deeply personal. When you’re in it, it feels like a thing that can’t be shared with others. At some points you think that sharing your grief would somehow lessen the importance of the thing you’re grieving. You feel alone in it, and sometimes that’s exactly what you want to feel. What you need to feel.

Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley is a vivid, raw portrayal of grief. It dissects those unreasonable, yet very real, feelings you have when someone close to you dies. In line with the theme, she quotes Didion a few times throughout the book. And I couldn’t help but notice the influence of Didion’s style in Crosley’s words. It’s that detached, yet ever so emotional and introspective prose, with quotes so precise that you won’t forget them any time soon. It’s brilliant.

As Sloane writes about the events surrounding her friend’s suicide, she weaves in bits from a burglary that happened to her exactly one month before her friend died. Due to their proximity in time, and her mind being clouded by grief, these events become interconnected for her. We see her trying, and failing, to find proof of her friend still being kept alive in the world. We see her pulling at the last bits of memory she has of her friend, trying to find a reason. An explanation as to why he left her in the world all alone.

This memoir was paradoxically sad and hilarious at the same time. It’s a story that gripped me right from the beginning, and I know I will be thinking about it for days to come. Thank you so much to FSG for the ARC.

Grief is for People is indeed a remarkable contribution to the side of the living. Crosley's memoir focuses on two personal tragedies, reflecting on the loss of her best friend Russell to suicide through the lens of a personal home invasion in which family jewelry was stolen. The memoir itself is a detective story - what seems to be a hunt for lost jewelry is ultimately a search for meaning. 

Crosley is an immensely talented writer. Even though it's clear her Russell and I would not be friends, I missed him in the way she missed him. I felt nervous and unsettled when she described the insecurity following the burglary. The brilliance of drawing together these two tragedies (with an additional focus on the pandemic towards the end of the book) make it read more like well-developed fiction. 

Despite the memoir's overarching theme of suicide, I laughed out loud more times than I remember. Crosley's sharp wit and approachable style make this an excellent memoir for anyone interested in loss, grief, or a search for meaning more broadly. 

4.5 stars.

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

What a heartbreaking book, in an incredibly poignant, reflective way. Sloane Crosley is a former book publicist turned author so obviously the writing is exquisite and emotional as she writes about the unexpected suicide of her best friend juxtaposed with a theft in her apartment a month prior and the pandemic that would start six months after his death. Crosley covers the typical topics that we see from those close to someone who has died by suicide - should I have seen this coming, what might I have done differently to prevent this, etc. - but also reflects on her relationship with Russell. She explores connection, both with friends like Russell, and with objects that carry some sense of history with them, like some of the items stolen from her apartment. We as a society don’t talk about grief enough, and I really appreciate this beautiful and vulnerable entry into the conversation.

I’ve always really liked Sloane Crosley’s writing and this book is no exception to that. When people are able to articulate their own grief, I find myself better to understand my own losses. By some miracle (and without processing the connection), I read this immediately after Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and I’m very glad I did. Crosley does a great job exploring the loss of her personal possessions and her dear friend while trying to find the meaning behind all of it. Highly recommend for fans of Crosley’s other books and those looking to dive further into their own understanding of grief.

This memoir is wonderful. I read this so quickly as Crosley’s writing is so immersive and witty I didn’t want to put it down. Dealing with such a hefty topic of suicide in the most raw and compassionate way, I will definitely return to this book again and again.

As someone who rarely takes notes, underlines, or scribbles in the margins while reading, it is truly a testament to this book how much of it I ended up highlighting. So many passages and even sentences just stopped me in my tracks and had me reading them over and over again.

It feels almost impossible to weigh in on writing like this that is so raw and personal, but this book completely bowled me over and I will be thinking about it for a long time. I am such a fan of Crosley’s writing and her signature wit remains while she deftly recounts a time in her life that was marked by such devastating grief. I am honestly just so thankful that I was able to read this and find some comfort in how one can begin to deal with this specifically tragic and complicated type of loss.

I can’t recommend this highly enough.

Many thanks to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Since reading I Was Told There’d Be Cake and Cult Classic and loving both, Sloane Crosley has become an author I will always keep an eye out for. Her memoir Grief Is For People is no exception to this pattern of great writing, holding off a bit on her humor centric style and exploring the vulnerability of losing her good friend and coworker to suicide and being robbed shortly after. Crosley still tastefully blends her humor that made me love IWTTBC into this at many points making it a great read.
Highly recommend for fans of Calypso - David Sedaris and The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion.
Big thank you to NetGalley and FSG/MCD for the e-ARC!

Crosley's first memoir shows the author lost in grief after the suicide of her best friend and former colleague, Russell Perreault, who hanged himself in 2019. The book's strength is also its weakness: Crosley depicts the process of coming to terms with what happened as messy, fragmentary, mysterious, and thus: realistically from a psychological standpoint, but it diminishes the essayistic force when mundane scenes that suddenly acquire meaning and random connections the mind makes under such pressure get the same (and frequently more) weight than the parts that are interesting on the factual level.

The book rests and emotional movements, and it does so intentionally, and the text is just as much about Crosley as about Perreault, also intentionally. But I wanted to hear more about Perreault's backstory and his possible motivations. I only briefly learnt how he, as a gay man, fled to NYC to live freely, how he did tend to not supplment, but replace his life with performance art, and, most interestingly, how he received regular complaints for his behavior at work because he was stuck in the old world where harsh, inappropriate words from older men were just accepted. I was wondering: How did Crosley feel about it, did they talk about it? Of course there can't be one definite answer as to why a person ends their life, but the neuralgic points remained too murky for me. I also loved the little bits and pieces about the publishing world, like the scandal around A Million Little Pieces, and I wanted more.

Still, Crosley remains a great writer, and it's intruguing to witness her trying to capture the unspeakable. The title hints at the fact that with a person, a whole world disappears, also a world of things, routines, events. There are many smart little throways there, relating to the power of anger, for instance, or the existential loneliness that becomes graspable when you realize you can't fully know a person. I wished the text made more of it potential though.

Great Author, Great Story, Loved it more than her others. A great book for a lazy weekend afternoon for an escape. Thanks

Sloane Crosley “dying is an art, like everything else” and this book is the masterpiece. An amazing tribute to her life long friend and thought piece on friendship with the powerful thesis of grief is for people, not things. She intertwines people, things, memories and stories all together and shows how intertwined it all really is.

"The burglary arrived "out of the blue." But for all of Russell's surface joy, there is a well of darkness inside him, a pond that he can dip his hand into whenever he likes. It's not such a nice world. Bad things happen. Sometimes they happen all at once."

This.book. My. heart. I have so many things highlighted and no idea where to begin.

Sloane Crosley makes you feel every step of her grief journey in such an incredibly understandable and relatable way. You never feel like Crosley is being too trite or trying to teach you something or make you feel exactly what she's feeling. She doesn't try to make grief something that someone should be tolerating or snapping back from. She acknowledges the ebbs and flows of her experience once Russell died and how that affected her need to get her jewelry back.

This book is probably not the best thing for someone who is closer to the experience of suicide, either for themselves or a loved one. It won't uplift you or empower you but it does remind the reader that you cannot fix or make someone not contemplate or die by suicide.

Crosley quickly comes to the conclusion that she couldn't do anything to stop Russell, even if she had known. She describes their relationship but doesn't pick it apart or try to prescribe parts of it to why she didn't expect him to die by suicide. She also makes a point to not hypothesize about how his other relationships were affected by his death or describe encounters with those people.

Crosley's poetic but not overly indulging style is perfect for this memoir. You can tell that it is truly an exercise in understanding these very specific events and how she handled them. I cannot wait to come back to this book!

Five stars. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book for an honest review.

This book eludes simple classification; it intertwines elements of memoir, mystery, and contemplation on grief, which is precisely what renders it so compelling. Crosley adeptly guides us through the intricate terrain of grappling with the theft of cherished jewelry and the profound loss of her dearest friend. In doing so, she offers a raw and genuine portrayal of the capricious and unyielding nature of grief. It stands as both a heartfelt homage to her beloved friend and a source of comfort for those navigating their personal journeys of sorrow. I wholeheartedly endorse giving it a read

I quite enjoyed Crosley's early books (e.g., I Was Told There'd Be Cake) but haven't read her more recent works until I stumbled across Grief is For People. Grief is For People displays all of Crosley's insight and humor even as it addresses the heavy themes of loss and mourning with heart-felt authenticity.

One small (potential) quibble: I have not quite landed on my response to Crosley's use of the Kubler-Ross framework. As applied to each chapter, the framework is simultaneously clever and obvious, appropriate and not quite on the mark, helpful and unnecessary.

But that critique is mostly besides the point. What probably is most relevant is that Crosley is a keen observer and commentator on the cultural moment. And she applies those same skills and her trademark wit to the ways in which her sense of the world was altered with the theft of her jewelry, the passing of her friend, and the pandemic.

Crosley is known for her hilarious essays & novels, but this time she's writing about twin tragedies in her life that occurred within a month of each other - the theft of jewelry from her NYC apartment and the suicide of her closest friend. Though that humor is still woven throughout, she brings the reader along for the heartbreaking ride as she grapples with her grief, relives moments of friendship, and learns to live with loss. Highly recommend for fans of Crying in H Mart.

I’m honestly a little torn about how to rate this book. The title is somewhat misleading. The first half is definitely a memoir about grief. And since grief in and of itself is so singular and unique, it’s not really something that can be shared. Your grief is yours. Its not more or less, bigger or smaller or like anyone else’s…so really why write a book on grief at all? Crosley didn’t. What seemed like a book about the death of her friend and an ongoing jewelry heist was actually a dissection of a man and his private life. There was actually a point in the book where the author writes that she debated about including what she was about to write. She absolutely should not have included it. It is one thing to remember someone and write about their life, it is another entirely to air someones dirty laundry after they have passed and cannot even give their permission or correct inaccuracies. The book went from being a somewhat acidic account of her grief to a gossipy, name dropping tell all.

Sloane is such a talented story teller. I appreciate that this book is out in the world. It's not like other books about grief that I've read. It's a memoir in a style that is refreshing to get lost in. I felt like I was there in the world Sloane describes. It's awesome when books do that for me. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Five stars!

I absolutely loved this memoir from Sloane Crosley. It was a not altogether new subject matter, but still nuanced in the treatment of death, grief, and processing trauma. Sloane has always had a way of holding you hostage in her pages and wrapping you tight in a feeling. This memoir is no different!

Not a fav.
Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

Sloane Crosley's latest work is a meditation on loss and grief. First, her apartment is robbed while she is out for an hour, and many heirlooms are stolen. Not long afterward, her best friend kills himself.

But these are mainly the stories upon which deeper meaning is sought. Sloane pursues locating her stolen jewelry like a detective, even using the services of detectives. She peruses the months before her friend's suicide, dissecting his behavioural changes and trying to remember instances that might have clued her to his sadness.

There is much soul searching, and frustration at never being able to come up with an answer besides allowing grief to be, to morph in the ways it does, taking as much time as it does.