Alan's Reviews > Grief Is for People

Crosley’s depiction of grief through a “trifling” event contrasts perfectly with another that is monumental. She discusses acute grief of having had her collection of jewellery stolen from her New York apartment. These were pieces of both immense sentimental and monetary value. Her world was shaken to the core, and her assumptions of what constituted a safe space completely shifted. Parallel to this narrative, we hear about the sudden, shocking suicide of one of her closest friends. This shakes the fundamentals on a deeper scale, triggering ideas of the futility of the self and the loss of meaning completely.

I listened to this book, and there were many moments that I needed to pause to hear what Crosley had just said. On the surface, a completely “irrelevant” sentence, but containing an ocean of loss. For the vast majority of this book, I vacillated between 3 and 4 stars. I kept thinking that the weaving of these two events did not quite hold up, that she did not have complete control of the narrative, and that she had included the jewellery episode as a B-plot in order to add more content to the book. Some of my complaints may be true. But the fact is this: toward the end, I understood her thesis, that none of this is supposed to make sense. Grief is not supposed to make sense. You may experience deep sadness over a necklace being stolen and lost into the seedy sellers of eBay, while at the same time finding yourself somewhat indifferent to the loss of your closest ally. Once this happens, you may experience shame and guilt on a scale that had been foreign to you just months prior. This is okay.

A book in the tradition of Didion, and one that adds to the literature of grief memoirs. It will be helpful for many, I’m sure.