Where Crosley’s first collections were dense with zingers made to deliver laughs, the most memorable lines in this one are built to break hearts. That reflects a similar shift in the author’s storytelling priorities: Crosley has changed focus from the mild absurdities of day-to-day existence to quiet but universal devastations ... Crosley remains inexorably funny, even as she uses her life and the lives she encounters to take on the heavier issues of aging, loneliness and mortality. Fans of Crosley’s signature humor — a blend of upbeat and offbeat self-effacement — will not be disappointed ... Look Alive Out There preserves Crosley’s instinct to observe minutiae and uncover answers to universal questions, while introducing a new willingness to acknowledge that sometimes stories don’t end with such neat answers.
By pursuing her tales of woe beyond riffs and rants, Crosley elevates these foibles above the anecdotal ... Sanctimony is toxic to personal essays, and Crosley wields its antidote, self-deprecation, with the skill of a practiced EMT ... Crosley's best essays combine her sparkling verbal facility with a willingness to expose and explore more personal issues ... There are several negligible pieces whose inclusion hints at a desperation for material, but her two ventures into personal medical history are keepers ... She has that rare ability to treat scrapes with sardonic humor and inject serious subjects with levity and hijinks with real feeling — a sort of unlicensed nurse to our souls.
I was beyond grumpy when I began reading Sloane Crosley’s third collection of essays, Look Alive Out There — which, it turns out, was exactly the right frame of mind in which to pick it up: within moments, Crosley had charmed me out of my bad humor ... Crosley’s jokes are simultaneously sharp and warm: the sharpness is directed at her surroundings, while the warmth is toward us, the reader. She invites us in ... The ways in which the collection might be called 'uneven' manifest on both the macro and the micro level: incisive passages are sometimes followed by ones that are harder to follow, and zingy observations are occasionally undermined by jokes that don’t work quite as well ... Yet the hilarity with which Crosley describes her uniquely urban plight is undergirded by pathos ... All I know is that after I read the last line, I teared up. I needed that as much as I’d needed to laugh. Look Alive Out There let me do both
Her stories aren’t setups to punch lines, as if crafted by a standup comic. Because she writes essays and is funny, she gets compared to David Sedaris. But unlike Sedaris’, her anecdotes do not serve as loose frameworks for rollicking comedy. They’re more like, 'So this really weird thing happened.' ... She shows little inclination to delve for deeper meanings. Whereas Sedaris’ humor often leads to some serious irony or epiphany, Crosley’s big themes are right there in their topics: death, illness, a ticking biological clock. In perhaps the most poignant essay, she meets a distant relative, a retired porn star who joined the industry looking for a girlfriend. He never found one. But so what if you don’t read Crosley’s essays for universal human truths? Read them because, when life is like a long drive on I-80 west of Omaha, you want a clever, funny friend along for the ride.
She’s not wedded to getting to the point, or even having one. Two of my favorite essays in the collection — 'Wheels Up' and 'The Grape Man' — are abbreviated, strange, poignant missives that tell us something nebulous about what it is to live in New York. They don’t overexplain themselves; they just are. It’s refreshing ... But by and large, the essays aren’t that funny. Reading Look Alive Out There often felt a bit like watching a not-very-funny sitcom with a laugh track. Crosley tells us where it’s supposed to be funny, so it might be a little funny, because we have the right cue. But only because she pointed it out ... She leans heavily on hyperbole and the slapstick humor of the situations that she finds herself in ... She’s a smart, talented writer who repeatedly puts herself into situations that make for interesting essays. A lot of — maybe most? — nonfiction writing is contrived this way. But hers feels strained because she plays the ingenue ... There is one essay, toward the end of the book, that I loved. It’s a powerful exploration of illness, and what it’s like to express it to others ... She still injects the essay with humor ... I found myself thinking that I wished the rest of the book had been more like this.
Her latest collection covers everything from fertility to vertigo, and it carries a newfound heft that can only be gained with age and experience ... Crosley’s writing crackles with wit and humanity. Look Alive Out There reaffirms her place as one of the most generous essayists writing today.
Sloane Crosley's Look Alive Out There is a collection stuffed with skimpy, sketchy occasionals that fail to create any relatable voice. Rather than being humorous, one-paragraph pieces like 'Right Aid' are just annoying ... Look Alive Out There is a mixed collection. The short sketches are barely even ideas. They're proof that even writing in small doses can feel like it takes a lifetime to read. The fully realized pieces... would have been better served had they been expanded or at least published in a different format. Clever observations and pithy comments stuffed between these more substantial pieces corrupt the text as a whole and make it a tedious reading experience.
Sloane Crosley has a gift. In a single piece she can find a way to be funny, familiar, removed and generously personal. She’s built a career on writing warmly and without condescension; hilariously, and without punching down. Within minutes of reading with her work, you feel as if you know her. Within the next hour, you’re convinced that you’re somehow kindred spirits ... The magic of Look Alive Out There is its celebration of detail. Whether writing about her childhood-crush-turned-nemesis, the British businessman who swindled her out of thousands, or the complex social life of her teenage neighbour, Crosley takes time to zoom in close enough for us to see ourselves in their eccentricities (or even sometimes her own).
Crosley continues to deliver indelible tales filled with undeniable wit and uncanny wisdom ... From walking down a New York City street to climbing an active volcano in Ecuador, Crosley’s inclusive style brings the reader along with her on the mostly unplanned adventures of her life. She derives thought-provoking prose and social commentary from each essay while never failing to provide her signature charm and insight. She effortlessly manages to balance both the poignant and the funny, and consistently delivers one-liners that will make you laugh out loud and think critically long after reading.
Laugh-out-loud funny seems too trite a phrase for a writer whose takes are so addictively original and unexpected, but it’s also true: dear readers, you will laugh. Whether 2 or 20 pages in length, Crosley’s essays are complete and stop-you-in-your-tracks clever.
The latest collection from the Manhattan-based essayist suggests she can write engagingly about nearly anything ... The author’s closing essay on preserving her eggs is a marvel of ambivalence on ticking clocks and motherhood. A smart, droll essay collection that is all over the map but focused by Crosley’s consistently sharp eye.
Crosley is exceedingly clever and has a witticism for all occasions, but it is her willingness to confront some of life’s darker corners with honesty and vulnerability that elevates this collection.
