If Crosley’s descriptions of love for Russell are often dazzling and unexpected, her meditations on grief are occasionally clichéd. But bromides are par for the course when it comes to bereavement, and this, too, is part of the indignity of loss ... Grief may follow a familiar path in every instance, but Russell himself was fiercely original, and Crosley paints a vivid and moving portrait of a singularity ... Not a philosophical meditation on grief but an honest account of its cruelties and contradictions. It contains no lessons, no morals and no solutions. It is not didactic. It is as messy, rollicking and chaotic as life isnot a philosophical meditation on grief but an honest account of its cruelties and contradictions. It contains no lessons, no morals and no solutions. It is not didactic. It is as messy, rollicking and chaotic as life is ... Crosley holds Russell in her heart with humor and humanity, and although she emphasizes that writing is not a consolation or an act of therapy, it is nonetheless a testament.
Not without amusing episodes — I don’t know that someone as funny as Crosley appears on the page could abandon humor entirely — but overall the book is more bold, probing, and exposed than anything else she has published ... Grief Is for People feels like she is staring directly at the reader, unshielded and unprotected ... With this latest work, she demonstrates that the converse is also true: By attesting to her pain so publicly and poignantly, Crosley again shows her noteworthy literary chops, as well as her unambiguous love for all that’s been lost.
The weight of suicide as a subject, paired with Crosley’s exceptional ability to write juicy conversation, prevents it from being the kind of slim volume one flies through and forgets. Her signature shrewdness comes through particularly in the Depression section, which shows the author in the depths of her grief, but offers relief through humorous lines of dialogue and passing thoughts on pandemic-era activities ... Though humor can feel downright medicinal in a time of grief, it has its limits. There are moments when the memoir reveals this, when Crosley is confronted by the reality that a joke is not a sustainable way of processing her pain ... Offering us a look into his life through the lens of her love, pain and admiration. Telling us, with precision and generosity, how it might be when it is our turn to remember what was true about those we’ve lost.
