Book Review

Processing the Suicide of a Dear Friend

Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley

Book image from Amazon

I guess I have been living under a rock because I don’t know Sloane Crosley’s work at all. Wikipedia gives us these highlights:

• Her first book was a collection of essays called, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, published in 2008. It was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. It was also optioned by HBO.
• Her second collection of essays came out in 2010. How Did You Get This Number was also a New York Times bestseller.
• Her debut novel, The Clasp, was published in 2015. It was optioned by Universal Pictures.
• Another book of essays, Look Alive Out There, was published in 2018. It too was a Thurber Prize finalist.
• A second novel, Cult Classic, was published in 2022. It was named a best book of the year by: The Washington Post, the BBC, Esquire, The Times of London, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle.

She has also published or edited stories in a long list of very impressive publications, and is an adjunct professor in the Master of Fine Arts program at Columbia University. The credential that brings her to the current book, Grief Is for People (2024), was the nine years she spent as Deputy…