This program is read by the author
Sloane Crosley returns to the form that made her a household name in really quite a lot of households: Essays! These small doses of wit and sass make for an exuberant, unforgettable audiobook.
From the New York Times–bestselling author Sloane Crosley comes Look Alive Out There—a brand-new collection of essays filled with her trademark hilarity, wit, and charm. The characteristic heart and punch-packing observations are back, but with a newfound coat of maturity. A thin coat. More of a blazer, really.
Fans of I Was Told There'd Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number know Sloane Crosley's life as a series of relatable but madcap misadventures. In Look Alive Out There, whether it's scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on Gossip Girl, befriending swingers, or staring down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.
Look Alive Out There arrives a decade after I Was Told There'd be Cake, and Crosley's essays have managed to grow simultaneously more sophisticated and even funnier. And yet she's still very much herself, and it's great to have her back—and not a moment too soon (or late, for that matter).
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 3, 2018 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781427293565
- File size: 179389 KB
- Duration: 06:13:43
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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In her latest collection of essays, author-narrator Sloane Crosley takes a sharp look at the freelance life, traveling for work, making reproductive decisions, and dealing with her New York City neighbors. Her expressive, clear delivery conjures a variety of moods, such as her feeling of awkwardness while awaiting a cameo appearance on a TV series, her struggle with altitude sickness on assignment in Ecuador, and her ready ability to laugh at herself and find sparks of joy even in frustrating situations. Crosley proves to be as entertaining a performer as she is a writer, changing up her cadence and timing and keeping listeners invested as she muses about life at the start of middle age. Her spot-on observations may be tempered by humor but are no less truthful. C.B.L. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from November 20, 2017
Crosley (The Clasp), in her third collection of personal essays, continues her tradition of hilarious insight into the human condition, whether the human involved is scaling a 20,000-foot volcano in Ecuador or inadvertently flirting with a drugstore cashier. Several essays are concerned with the tensions that arise in urban life. In “Outside Voices,” the author tries to quiet a teenage neighbor’s nightly carousing without become crotchety and square in the process (“I bit the bullet and called 311, a placebo service for cranks on the brink”). “Wolf” involves a literal identity crisis as Crosley contends with a man holding her internet domain name hostage. “Cinema of the Confined” finds the author battling an extended bout of vertigo and drawing astute comparisons between travel writing and writing about illness. But as the dizziness is revealed to be a symptom of a rare and largely untreatable condition, the connection becomes fraught: “This was not some exotic destination that I would one day leave and report back on. This was my home now.” 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. Agent: Jay Mandel, William Morris Endeavor. -
May 28, 2018
Crosley’s confident reading of her latest collection of personal essays comes across like a great stand-up comic performance. Her wacky tales of life as a starving young writer interacting with neighbors, friends, and strangers are satirical, insightful, often tender, and always funny. Her peevish tone perfectly suits her hallmark surly, self-deprecating humor. With rising or falling intonation, she also ruminates on more personal matters, such as her decision to not have children. Crosley has one bad habit shared by many audio narrators: she drops her voice at the ends of sentences, creating distracting rhythmic patterns at various points in her reading. Still, fans will love listening to the author’s lively rendering of wise and wicked stories from her life. An MCD hardcover.
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