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4.5 stars

"Human beings are the only animals that experience denial. All creatures will try to survive under attack, will burrow when under siege or limp through the forest. But they recognize trouble when it hits . . . Denial is humankind's specialty, our handy aversion. We are so allergic to our own mortality; we'll do anything to make it not so. [It] is also the weirdest stage of grief because it so closely mimics stupidity. But it can't be helped, [and] I can't be helped. " -- on pages 17-18

Author Crosley - who first hit my reading radar with her enjoyable essay collections I Was Told There'd Be Cake and Look Alive Out There over five years ago - takes a different direction with her newest non-fic offering entitled Grief is for People. She describes being a burglary victim - jewelry was stolen while she was away on a brief errand - at her New York City apartment in July 2019. Exactly one month later she loses a very close friend and former co-worker (from her pre-author days toiling away at a respected publishing company) in a completely unexpected suicide. Then approximately six months after that the metropolis enters into 'ghost town' status with the arrival of the Coronavirus pandemic. Far from being a supremely depressing read, Crosley channels her grief, confusion, anger and various other understandably shifting emotional states into a journal of sorts about those uneven months and the dark topic of loss. It made for a compelling and an occasionally even humorous work, with the most resonant and affecting sections being about the memories of her friend Russell and their big brother / little sister sort of relationship in and out of the office.