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. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck
Shelf Talker: Sloane Crosley's out-of-the-ordinary bereavement memoir is a heartfelt and humorous tribute to her best friend as well as a reflection on the inner workings of grief.