Potent and propulsive, a lyrical meditation on loss and what comes after – TARA WESTOVER
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’ in this deeply moving and surprisingly suspenseful portrait of friendship, Grief Is for People is a category-defying story of the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it. A modern elegy, it is a book about loss packed with verve for life, rising precisely to console and challenge our notions of mourning during these grief-stricken times.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
Imprint: Serpent’s Tail UK
Publication date: 19/03/2024
Grief is for People
By Sloane Crosley
Review by Rosa
Through collating two vastly different traumatic events- a home invasion and the death of a close friend- Sloane Crosley explores the social hierarchy of grief and how it is often overlooked in regard to friendships. The division of her story to mirror the five stages of grief highlights all the discombobulated feelings that come with loss and the necessity, yet difficulty of working through them. However, despite its tragic subject matter I would not describe Grief is for People as overly dark or grim. Crosley utilises her humour, wit, and brutal honesty, and takes the awfully inevitable and incessant experiences of loss and writes them into being reassuring for those who are riding the waves and insightful for those who have yet to. Overall, this memoir feels like a deep and meaningful, albeit exposing, conversation with a friend where you laugh and cry and uncover that it is possible to continue to live, love, and grieve, in intense and equal measure.
For those that enjoyed A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.
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