-
Access Our
Most Anticipated
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Essays
by Sloane Crosley
Book Reviewed by:A brand-new collection of essays filled with 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 squinting 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 on the tenth anniversary of 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).
Some of the pieces here are mere vignettes, tiny moments of observation or connection that span only a page or two, while others resemble longer journalistic pieces in which, inevitably, Crosley herself is the hapless protagonist even as she investigates the capriciousness of modern life. Look Alive Out There is sure to satisfy the long-time fans of her witty, sardonic personal essays while her new maturity will also gain her new ones...continued
Full Review
(519 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
Among other things, Crosley is a travel writer, and one of the most enjoyable essays in her new collection Look Alive Out There recounts her near-disastrous attempt to summit Cotopaxi, a volcano in Ecuador, more or less on a whim.
Cotopaxi, part of the Andes mountain chain, is the second-highest mountain in Ecuador (at 19,347 feet), and one of the world's tallest active volcanoes. It has erupted more than fifty times in the last three hundred years, most recently in 2015 and 2016. Hundreds of thousands of people live in relatively close proximity to Cotopaxi, close enough to be significantly affected if (and when) it erupts again.
The most recent eruption put a temporary halt to climbing activities on the volcano, which reopened...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked Look Alive Out There, try these:
by Annabelle Gurwitch
Published 2015
Scorchingly honest, surreally and riotously funny, I See You Made an Effort is the ultimate coming-of-middle-age story and a must-read for women of all ages. Reading glasses not included.
by Megan Mayhew Bergman
Published 2012
A heartwarming and hugely appealing debut collection that explores the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world.
Steve Martin
Sloane Crosley does the impossible. She stays consistently funny and delivers a book that is alive and jumping.
