Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and surprisingly suspenseful portrait of friendship, and a book about loss packed with verve for life. Sloane Crosley is one of our most renowned observers of contemporary behavior, and now the pathos that has been ever present in her trademark wit is on full display. After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in friends, philosophy, and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief.

For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together as they navigated the corridors of office life, the literary world, and the dramatic cultural shifts in New York City. One day, while Russell is still alive, Sloane’s apartment is broken into. Along with her most prized possessions, the thief makes off with her sense of security, leaving a mystery in its place.

When Russell dies exactly one month later, his suicide propels her on a wild quest to right the unrightable, to explore what constitutes family and possession as the city itself faces the staggering toll brought on by the pandemic.

Crosley’s search for truth is frank, darkly funny, and gilded with a resounding empathy. Upending the “grief memoir,” Grief Is for People is the category-defying story of the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it. A modern elegy, it rises precisely to console and challenge our notions of mourning during these grief-stricken times.

Sloane Crosley is the author of the novels Cult Classic and The Clasp, as well as three essay collections: Look Alive Out There and the New York Times bestsellers I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number. She lives in New York City.

Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of seven novels, including Prep, American Wife, Eligible and Rodham, and one story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. Her newest novel, Romantic Comedy, was published in April 2023. Her books have been selected by The New York Times, Time, EW, and People for their “Ten Best Books of the Year” lists, picked twice for Reese Witherspoon's book club, and translated into thirty languages. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Best American Short Stories anthology, of which she was the 2020 guest editor. She lives with her family in Minneapolis.

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