Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley
Grief is for People is not a self-help book for the bereaved. Novelist and essayist Sloane Crosley riffs instead on loss in a set of essays triggered by burglary. An agile criminal got through the bedroom window of her New York apartment and stole the family jewels—mostly inherited from a grandmother recalled by Crosley as malice in human form. She felt violated and fearful. Was she, in the word used by the investigating cops, “targeted”? And then one of her close friends, her former boss at a publishing house, walked to the barn on his Connecticut property and hung himself.
Crosley records many interesting thoughts and impression. “It’s an odd sensation, to be an adult and look up to another adult,” she writes of her lost friend. “Most traumatic events present their size and shape fairly quickly. But some unfurl slowly, like a fist loosening its grip.” Sections of Grief read like a memoir of growing up in a disturbed family, working in the shrinking publishing industry and the meaning of friendship. At moments, Grief alludes to the uncertainty of life in a society where the goal posts keep shifting and the guard rails hang loose. Crosley returns often to thoughts of loss. “It’s impossible to predict how much you’ll miss something when it’s gone, to game grief in advance,” she writes.
