Let's eat Grandpa!

I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley, narrated by the author

Read: Based on several recommendations. And it has a great title. And it has a great cover. (Riverhead Trade, 240 pages)

Rating: 8 out of 10 (finished 7/8/10)

Synopsis:  This debut essay collection is full of sardonic wit and charm, and Crosley effortlessly transforms what could have been stereotypical tales of mid-20s life into a breezy series of vignettes with uproariously unpredictable outcomes. From the opening The Pony Problem to the hilarious Bring-Your-Machete-to-Work Day (which will ring true for any child of the early 1990s who played the first Oregon Trail computer game), Crosley is equal parts self-deprecating and endearing as she recounts her secret obsession with plastic ponies and the joys of exacting revenge via a pixellated wagon ride. In less capable hands, the subjects tackled—from unpleasant weddings of long-forgotten friends to horrendous first jobs—could have been a litany of complaints from yet another rich girl from the suburbs. But Crosley, who grew up in Westchester and currently lives in Manhattan, makes the experiences her own with a plethora of amusing twists: a volunteer job at the American Museum of Natural History leads to a moral quandary, and a simple Upper West Side move becomes anything but. Fans of Sarah Vowell’s razor-sharp tongue will love this original new voice.

Overall Impression: After being somewhat let down by How Did You Get This Number (review), I was a little apprehensive to read this one. But considering the buzz and how many people I know who liked it, I thought I’d give it a shot. I picked up the audiobook version, hoping that Crosley’s voice would help bring her essays to life. I’m really glad I did — she is so dry, but her narration really worked for her essays. Like Joshua Ferris reading The Unnamed (review), Crosley’s reading felt very much like I was in a creative writing class and she was reading her stories out loud, making the rest of us wish we were so talented. The essays themselves were, for the most part, very good. I particularly enjoyed the first essay, which was about a drawer full of ponies. (Yes, ponies. In a drawer.) I absolutely loved this essay, and was soon able to test the “I have a surprise for you!” theory, though, sadly, it didn’t result in a pony. I also loved the essay on the Oregon Trail, which, as the synopsis above points out, any kid of the 90s would love. (I can’t count the number of times I’ve died of dysentery.) While I was annoyed with some of the essays in How Did You Get This Number for being overly New-Yorky, I thought she navigated this series of essays with much more subtlety and grace (mostly), and I found her much more likable, which made her essays much more readable.

Pros: She has some hilarious stories that worked well for fodder for this series of essays.

Cons: A few essays meandered a bit for my liking, and there was still a bit of the I-Live-In-New-York-Which-Makes-My-Stories-Way-More-Interesting-Than-Yours…ness to it.

Other books I’ve read by Sloane Crosley: How Did You Get This Number

Other blogger reviews: S. Krishna’s Books (Are you kidding me, people? I swear more of my readers have read and reviewed this — I feel like I’ve read a handful of reviews and now I can’t find any of them. Was it you?)