Grief Is for People

With her trademark humor, author Sloane Crosley ’00 mourns the loss of a close friend

It may not have been a great time for anyone, but 2019-2020 was particularly harrowing for New York Times bestselling author Sloane Crosley ’00. In a painful pileup, she lost a close friend, book publicist Russell Perreault, to suicide, and had her apartment burgled. Then, she had to watch as the world just outside her window sank into a pandemic.

In her eighth book and first memoir, Grief Is for People, Crosley takes readers with her on a journey through “loss and grief and the sort of uneven topography” of the human experience.

“It’s about these two successive events, these gradually increasing losses and how they all connect,” she says. “It’s about trying to figure out where certain kinds of mourning belong and who gets to mourn and over what, about that struggle between figuring out what’s a big deal and what’s not.”

With such heavy topics, it can be easy to forget that Crosley is an extremely funny author. Her essays, including those in the collections I Was Told There’d Be Cake, How Did You Get This Number and Look Alive Out There, and novels, including The Clasp and Cult Classic, are replete with sly observations and outright guffaw-inducing punchlines. In Grief, that humor still saturates her prose.

“It’s how I express myself,” says Crosley. “I’m not saying I’m the funniest person in the world, but it is what I have. I’ve read things from other writers on similar topics, and they’re startlingly beautiful. I find myself somewhat envious of that. But I’ve realized these are the tools I use to get to the same topic and drill down to the core of it. They’re funny, and they’re not pretty.

“Grief Is for People is really my attempt to imitate that strange rollercoaster of grief. And sometimes that includes this dark humor. The person I really love most dies in this horrible way. I am deeply unlucky that this incredibly funny person died. But, when it comes to a book, I am incredibly lucky. Because now you have two inappropriate people driving this car.”

One of the most anticipated books of the year, Grief became an instant New York Times bestseller when it was released in late February. Since then, Crosley’s been promoting the book on a press tour that included a stop at The Daily Show. 

When asked how she feels about looking back on both the person she was when she lived through 2019-2020 and when she wrote the book, Crosley admits it can be a challenge.

“I feel sometimes unqualified to talk about my books because of how long it takes to produce a book. In the case of Grief Is for People, that anxiety, that apprehension that I’m slightly removed from it is actually incredibly pronounced,” she says.

To further explain herself, she turns to the author she describes as her “personal bard,” Truman Capote.

“I think Capote had a quote about how writers should only start after their tears have dried. Not to disagree, but I feel like maybe the tears are dry but the tissues are still wet. You have to find that point,” she says. 

“I’m not the biggest fisherwoman—which I am sure will surprise the readers of CC Magazine—but I know there’s certain kinds of fly fishing where you are trying to attract a fish, and then there’s others where you’re almost just trying to get in the way of the fish. And I feel like nonfiction personal writing is like that. It’s about the timing. If I were to start writing this book now, I don’t think I could do it.”

Photo by Jennifer Livingston