Sloane Crosley's world is turned upside down when her apartment is broken into. Not simply because her possessions are stolen, but because she has also been robbed of her sense of security.

One month later, Crosley's close friend and former colleague Russell died by suicide. These two events are not related, but their proximity forces Crosley to examine the different types of grief we experience throughout our lives. Is grief even the correct word to describe experiences that don't involve a death?

The book is divided into five sections. The first four are named after the stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. Don't worry if you are not a fan of the five stages, Crosley isn't either acknowledging that while they are a recognisable shorthand, grief doesn't operate that neatly in reality. So, she chose to name the final section afterward rather than acceptance.

The method of Russell's death is mentioned more than once. Crosley writes about it with great care and sensitivity, but I know suicide can be a complicated subject for people to read detailed accounts of which is why I am mentioning it. If you are not in the headspace for a book like this because you have lost a loved one to suicide, I get it. I couldn't have read this book in the year or two following my dad's suicide. Crosley has written beautifully about the impact Russell's death had on her while not reducing him solely to his death. Their friendship leaps off the page, and Russell is portrayed as a complete person. This might sound strange to point out, but so often, the stories we hear about a person's suicide reduce them solely to that action, so I want to emphasise that Crosley does not do that.

Grief Is For People is a memoir that is as tender as it is humorous. I haven't read Crosley's other work, but I am looking forward to reaching into her back catalogue.

Sloane Crosley has a singular voice and I would read whatever she writes-- even her shopping list. This is her memoir about the two losses she suffered within days of each other: her heirloom jewellery to a robbery, and her best friend to suicide. It's not so much a book about grief, more a book about these specific experiences. I particularly loved her account of trying to recover her stolen jewellery in slightly dodgy circumstances.

It's not a perfect book. If you want a non-fiction analysis of the who/what/where/why/how of grief, you should look elsewhere. But still, it is sad and insightful and a definite must if you're a Crosley fan.

***advance review copy received from NetGalley in return for an honest review***
A book that is not so much a book but a collection of recollections, some of which are amusing and some of which are incredibly raw. Crossley mixes two personal events with the wider event of the pandemic and the 2020 shutdown, cross referencing and creating similarities between them.
The narrative - such as it is - jumps around a bit, this is not a linear explanation and we hop with her back and forward through time experiencing little bits of her life here and there. The style isn’t quite my cup of tea, but the depth of emotion did really speak to me. Her descriptions of grief, loss and of trying to make sense of it all is something that will resonate with anyone who has had the misfortune to experience the same.

grief really is for the people and the people felt so overwhelmed and enlightened reading about the author’s own grief.

it’s hard to attach words to something so raw and personal but it’s a beautiful thing the author has managed to do; so much emotion behind grief is mystical and nonsensical yet i could feel and understand every part of this book.

i’ve never lost anyone to suicide but i have been there personally and reading about the affects it can have on your friends and family helped me put a lot of things into perspective & helped me to let go of them in some respects.

a haunting book but lovely all the same.

(thank you for the ARC)

This is relatvely slight but it's really nice to see Slone Crossley back to writing memoir, which I've always personally enjoyed more than her fiction. This is a touching tribute to the friend she lost and a clear attempt to claim ownership of her friend and the grief of losing him in a way that has perhaps not been allowed space in real life. It's highly personal and your enjoyment of this book will likely be impacted by your tolerance for that - personally I wasn't quite comfortable with it but it's clearly a very genuinely felt piece of writing. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Serpent’s Tail for a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

Sloane Crosley lost a colleague, one of her closest friends, to suicide back in 2019. She also lost some prized possessions in a burglary on her home. These two events, the death of her friend primarily taking the lead, act as the springboard of this book, as we witness Corsley parse the various elements of loss that make up a person’s life.

Loss surrounds us from day to day. You’ll rarely take note of it, nor will you remember it once you’ve slept it off, as it’s usually always in the form of something unassuming and small. Losing some documents at home. Time in the day runs out before you’ve completed your to-do list. A job opportunity goes begging. Something that will have no effect and will leave no mark. Loss only truly becomes an issue when it relates to a person. When you lose a person it’s a dagger. Losing someone in any way leads to grief on various levels arriving with it.

Looseness plays a role in the writing throughout this memoir, as it feels to be an authentic portrayal of how thoughts swim around for a person going through grief. The losing of a loved one means complete absence. It is total erasure of a pillar of your life. It feels alien at an almost indescribable level. Being informed of loss in a haze, it only ricochets. The finality that’s forced on a person can lead to them grasping at all memories they have off their forever-gone loved one. “Grief is for People” paints a perfect picture of how that can act out in one’s mind when going through the various stages of grief. Thoughts of the person you miss spring up in times of complete unrelation. Anger spits out at those who truly care. Involuntarily locking yourself off feels needed. You know deep down that it’s damaging, but you still lock yourself away. These behaviours, impacted by grief, are described with the utmost care and legitimacy by the author.

The book is not linear in its “narrative” either, as we are taken on a genuinely suspenseful heist situation quite early on, to then be led into the deep underbelly of the publishing world. Crosley mentions in the book, that there is quite a saturation around writings that deal with grief. Many of them come in the form of grifter self-help formats, while others are always looking for a uniqueness that allows them to stand out from the crowd. With this memoir, however, Sloane Crosley’s uniqueness in the form of heists and the shadows of the publishing world feel true to her tackling of grief. They run side by side with the formation and progression of this work. They do not feel premeditated. They’re grow from the soul. Authenticity throughout.

It isn’t a sad book on its face. It does not wear sadness as it’s outer jacket. The book feels to be a genuine and thoughtful exercise in meeting grief at the door. Sadness arises in moments that feel real.

Who is this book for? You. Me. Everyone. You lost something today. You will lose something tomorrow. Loss encapsulates. It is not just a feeling. It doesn’t come and go. Loss and grief are a package deal. Loss and grief. Grief is for people. Grief is people and people are grief. Grief should be met with the wittiness that this book pockets in its 200-or-so pages. Hopefully that will alleviate some of the rawness it brings.

A really gorgeous and poignant memoir. I loved how Crosley writes. So much of this book resonated deeply with me, I am going to buy copies for several people who I think will find solace in her words.
Recommend.

Beautifully written and moving, if a little unfocused. Could have been much shorter without the repetition.

Grief Is For People
by Sloane Crosley

I almost didn't attempt to read this book, because 10 days after I received it, my family lost someone of great importance to us, and nothing about dealing with the immediate loss of a loved one indicates reading a memoir on grief. Not so soon.

I don't know why I did it, but a few days later I allowed my eyes to travel over the first page, and was instantly lured by the author's voice. Before I knew it I was more than 20% in, and was hanging on every word, because this was like staring into a mirror.

Crosley somehow manages to find the exact combination of words and phrases to describe the hitherto indescribable. Her accuracy is stunning. There's no sentimentality, no pearl clutching, no platitudes. It is pure, honest, self depreciating truth.

Through examination of the ways in which she experienced loss through theft, the surreality, the visceral reaction to invasion of privacy, the why-me-ness, the exposure of vulnerability, the "if-only" thought spirals, the compulsion to seek retribution, she creates a language of response that shortly after becomes useful and necessary in processing her experience of loss of a friend through suicide. As incompatible as that seems, it strangely works. It works so well that she must remind herself that grief is for people, not things, giving us this inspired title.

I can't say this will work for others in the way it worked for me, but it was the right book at the right time. I really appreciate this author's writing style and am eager to read more by her.

Publication Date: 29th February 2024
Many thanks to #netgalley and #serpentstailbooks for providing a free review copy in exchange for my honest unedited feedback

A tender, thoughtful memoir about loss. Crosley's apartment gets broken into one day and it hits her harder than she ever imagined it would. A few weeks after that, her close friend Russell, with whom she worked for years, kills himself and she finds herself dealing with a different, deeper kind of loss, although the two things become entwined in her mind. Dealing with the sudden, brutal loss of her friend and the distance the pandemic puts between any semblance of the life she knew and the one she is being forced to endure, she finds herself with a lot of time to think about and grieve for her friend. This isn't entirely bleak. Crosley is an engaging, thoughtful writer who is good at seeing the dark humour in life. Her charm and wit lift this and make it something other than a misery memoir.

'Grief is for People' is both a memoir about grief and loss which is both sad and funny, as Sloane Crosley describes the impact of the suicide of her best friend, and former boss, Russell.

Crosley begins her memoir in June 2019, exactly a month before Russell's death when her New York apartment is burgled and her jewellery is stolen, some handed down from her grandmother - an "awful person", Crosley tells us, to preclude us feeling too much sympathy. But this loss and sense of violation prefigures Russell's death in July, and the two losses become entwined in Crosley's mind: when she discovers her stolen ring and necklace for sale on eBay, she becomes obsessed with getting them back, in the hope that this might somehow restore Russell to her too.

In later sections of the book, Crosley tells us more about her relationship with Russell and their time working in publicity for Vintage Books - including their work on James Frey's A Million Little Pieces which became the subject of huge controversy because of questions about the accuracy of Frey's supposed memoir. Crosley also takes us forward to 2020 and the pandemic, as her grief reverberates through a now empty New York.

This is a moving, absorbing and well-written memoir which offers a new insights on a difficult topic. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

I was a bit skeptic about the different types of grief and thought it could be a hard book if are stressed or a bit blue.
It was cathartic, thought provoking and it shows how grief is a unique even if there's differnt causes.
Not an escapist or heartwarming story but a very good one
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This is a short, but cleanly observed account of a woman’s experience of the suicide of her best friend.

I expected this to be a tough read – the same thing happened to me, in the same way, albeit as an 18-year-old rather than an adult – but instead I was grateful that I had dealt with the death and the aftermath in a similar way. I found that after all these years that I wasn’t alone.

The style of this memoir will surprise no one who is familiar with Crosley’s writing and I feel that it suits the subject matter. Suicide is (usually) an unexpected and unpalatable upheaval made all the worse by hangers-on around the periphery who like to wallow in the scandal whilst it doesn’t affect them too much. Crosley’s steely prose gives insight into what it’s like to be on the inside.

“I am waiting for the things I love to come back to me, to tell me they were only joking.

Grief is for people, not things.”

How do we engage with the world when our people are no longer a part of it? Crosley grapples with life after the death of her best friend, Russell. She reminisces and through her often funny stories we come to know Russell, his quirks and idiosyncrasies, but not the why of his death. That’s the thing though. We can’t always know and so we search for meaning in our memories, in every bit of dialogue exchanged and ask ourselves, did we miss the signs?

In Grief is for People, Crosley doesn’t just focus on her personal grief but engages with the collective sadness around events such as 9/11 and the pandemic. That life limps inevitably onward and we eventually overtake the ones who left us behind.

I am 53 years old this month and my best friend will remain forever 25. And that’s a very sad thing indeed.

I’m afraid I really struggled with this book. I had high hopes from reading some of the reviews, but, found the writing style slow and difficult to follow. I appreciate this is a memoir, so, the author is relating very personal experiences and I’m grateful to NetGalley and Viper publishing for the opportunity to preview. Just not one for me.

I have loved Crosley's fiction work but i haven't read any of her essay collections so I didn't know what to expect from this memoir but a few pages in and i was hooked . It seems wrong to say i really enjoyed this when the subject matter is grief and loss but it is written in such an honest way that i feel she would want readers to say its an enjoyable read . Yes, it's sad , thought provoking and moving but it also has elements of humour and wit that will make you smile. I loved the references to Didion, her tales of working in Publicity for Vintage , her friendship with Russell ( who seems such a character !) and also the backdrop that is New York.
I am now hunting down her entire backlist of essays after reading this one , loved it

On a a stunning and poignant memoir that tells the story of a friendship and explores different kinds of losses following the death of a friend. This book has not only moved me, but also profoundly challenged my understanding of what it means to grief.⁣
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Sloane Crosley starts by telling the story of how her apartment in New York City was broken into and how her most prized possessions, including jewellery, were taken away from her, along with her sense of security. About a month later, her best friend Russell Perreault, who was also her former boss at Vintage, died by suicide. All of these events prompted Crosley to explore the truth and she certainly details her own experience in navigating the various stages of loss.⁣
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She writes about looking for her dead friend everywhere, never finding him, and learning to live with him. The book is filled with beautiful, lyrical prose and I’m pretty sure it’s one of my most highlighted books ever.⁣
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“It turns out that most things don’t end too many times, Russell. Most things don’t end at all. So much is still unsolved. I still want to know where everything I loved has gone and why. Perhaps if I knew more about God, I would know it’s blasphemous to want answers, and perhaps if I knew more about philosophy, I would know it’s foolish to suggest there are answers. Maybe one day, in a world that looks reasonably enough like this one, you’ll tell me. But for now, I must poke holes in all this curiosity so that I might breathe, so that I might get on with the second half of my life. If I desire the kind of life you wanted me to live, one of expansion over retraction, I must learn to be on the side of the living.“⁣
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This was her first book I’ve read and safe to say, it wouldn’t be the last. Loved it.

Having a friend die unexpectedly at the start of this month. Makes this the book for me at just the right time. Because of the subject matter it is hard to say it’s a good book but it was valuable to me and I read it in one sitting. If you’re dealing with or want to understand grief. Read this book.

I enjoyed Crosley’s fiction very much, so it’s with some regret that I must admit I was bored by this effort.

I’m always trying to find books about grief that I can identify with, so I was keen to read this one. I picked it up just to see… and then couldn’t put it down.

It’s beautifully written, gripping, heartbreaking but frequently funny, and it made me profoundly feel the loss of someone I never knew, someone I hadn’t even heard of before this book.