Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley

The flip side of all of this family time full of fluffy mashed potatoes and gravy, of course, is grief. The grief for this people we have lost, who are no longer at the dining room table. We have not forgotten them, and yet we cannot hug them and see them as we once did. I think about grief every day, and I never seem to make much sense of it. Recently I shared a hotel room with my sister in Evanston, and this book "Grief is for People" by Sloane Crosley was on her bedside table. When I asked her what it was about, Kathleen said, "A burglar breaks into this woman's New York apartment, and steals all her jewelry. Shortly after that, her gay best friend commits suicide." Hmm. Ok then. I had to find out more. This memoir is kind of the anti-memoir in that Crosley doesn't really want to be writing this story, but she has to in order to make sense of what happened. I find the reluctant memoir fascinating. Even more interesting is that Crosley and her friend Russell worked in the glitz and glam or Manhattan publishing during the early 2000s, including on the controversial memoir "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey. This is not a book that is tied up neatly in a bow at the end. Rather it is a raw and honest tale about a young woman trying the make sense of the fact that bad things happen to good people. The ending poses the questions, "How do we continue to live and to grieve?" And that is a question that is still to be determined. To buy this book on Amazon click here.