Publishers Weekly
07/06/2015
Taking a page from her essay collections (I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number), Crosley once again brandishes a mix of smarts and sarcasm to commemorate some of life’s more mortifying moments in her first work of fiction. The novel begins at a luxe wedding as once-close friends—Victor, a recently fired misanthropic data analyst at an Internet start-up; Kezia, the tightly wound second in command to an eccentric New York jeweler; and Nathaniel, a foppish, struggling TV writer in L.A.—rehash old sexual tensions and lament their stagnant existences since the carefree days of college a decade prior. A third of the way through the book, the narrative shifts from oft-explored late-20-something territory into a ridiculous yet entertaining comedy-of-errors adventure caper with doddering Victor at the helm. When the ailing mother of the groom discovers him drunkenly passed out on her bed the night of the wedding, she inexplicably reveals the whereabouts of a secret stash of jewels to him before dying—including a sketch of the long-lost 114-karat necklace featured in Guy de Maupassant’s famed short story “The Necklace” and clues to its supposed whereabouts. Victor’s harebrained attempts at tracking the necklace down, culminating in a French chateau break-in with a mildly concerned Kezia and Nathaniel in hot pursuit, make not only for fun reading but hint at the surprisingly poignant extent of just how far old acquaintances will go to save one another’s hides. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
"Crosley is already an established humorist…and her signature wit is sharp as ever here. She is startlingly good at portraying comically awful characters who would seem cartoonish if they weren’t also so recognizable. Crosley is an incisive observer of human nature in general and of a generation in particular….[A] highly comic, highly affecting novel."—Julia Pierpont, The New York Times Book Review
"Crosley is best known for her comic essays, some of which were collected in I Was Told There'd Be Cake, but her gifts—keen observation, mordant humor, an affinity for the bittersweet—translate surprisingly seamlessly into fiction. [A] sad, hopeful, endlessly entertaining book." —Lev Grossman, TIME
“Wonderful and wacky. Crosley's a pundit of the absurd… Those who love [her] essays for the way they straddle the line between slapstick humor and essential truths will love her fiction too. Each sentence builds upon the last, toward one big wink: Isn't life weird? And isn't it great?”—Elle
“A novel with more verve and imagination than much of the plot-light fare that typically gets the high-literary treatment, a story that shares at least some DNA with ambitious capers like Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Fans of [Crosley’s] essays will be pleased to find that she’s just as funny and tenderly deprecating with her fictional characters as she is with herself.”—Vogue.com
“A knockout.”—O Magazine
“In her debut novel, The Clasp, Crosley’s talent for extracting hilarity from disappointment crosses over into fiction and thrives there… Amid all the travel and high jinks, the true journey of this book is a philosophical one. The book’s delicious humor and whirlwind plot help the book’s harshest medicine — important-but-sad epiphanies of life’s truths, both beautiful and cold — taste far more enjoyable than it would if delivered by a less-funny writer. The amusing adage “If I have to learn something, I’d rather have fun doing it” fits The Clasp well: Its humor is wildly entertaining, but relevance always shows up at the party.”—The San Francisco Chronicle
"Sloane Crosley graduates from delightful essayist to accomplished novelist in one giant step that she takes easily in The Clasp . . . The novel deepens even as the mood lightens. The madcap adventure is responsible for the latter, but it’s the profound connection that the lapsed friends rekindle that makes The Clasp a rich read."—The New York Daily News
"Crosley has achieved a rare feat: a complex and clever work of homage that deepens the original by connecting it to contemporary life. The Clasp is a gentle, astute, funny, smart, and very entertaining book.”—The New Republic
"The breezy New York essayist with a post-millennial undertow hasn't radically altered her voice in transit to fiction. That's good, because Crosley's skittery wit and polished warmth make her first novel worthy of its meta-fictional basis, "The Necklace," Guy de Maupassant's short story about the fraudulence of our fetish for authenticity….[a] luminous, ridiculous adventure, a caper in the French countryside that evokes both Amélie and The Pink Panther." —New York Magazine
“Crosley’s stylishness as a writer never tips over into shtickiness or stifles her warmth—it only makes the flowering of genuine emotion more powerful . . . She deftly rewrites The Great Gatsby, another exploration of authenticity and falsehood in which youngish friends and lovers seek to recapture the past. But in her version, the green light—the dream—never appears: These characters don’t even know what they want. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that their desires are too diffuse to collapse into a single brilliant point on the horizon.” —Slate
“The Clasp is shot through with numerous inimitable Crosley-isms—wisecracking young sophisticates, trenchant yet occasionally perverse social observations, the errant (and unapologetic) pun. At its heart, though, it's a treasure hunt. Playing off the melodrama and social critique of Guy de Maupassant's classic 1884 short story "The Necklace," The Clasp pulls three college friends, now pushing 30 and each struggling with their own versions of existential disenchantment, along a journey of literal and figurative discovery.” —Meghan Daum, Interview Magazine
"Sloane Crosley is one of the sharpest and funniest writers around." —The A.V. Club
"Crosley's sardonic wit makes the book a sly page-turner; like listening to a story told by a friend with a knack for making everything just a little funnier than it really is... And [The Clasp's] treasure-hunt elements are irresistible." —The Seattle Times
"An amusingly satisfying literary aperitif for those who can quote Foucault or Tupac interchangeably." —The Minneapolis Star Tribune
"I took so much pleasure in every sentence of The Clasp, fell so completely under the spell of its narrative tone—equal parts bite and tenderness, a dash of rue—and became so caught up in the charmingly dented protagonists and their off-kilter caper, that the book's emotional power, building steadily and quietly, caught me off-guard, and left me with a lump in my throat."—Michael Chabon
"I opened The Clasp and immediately realized that I'd been waiting far too long for Sloane Crosley to write a novel. Crosley is a literary addiction. There is no substitute. She is curious. She is smart. She is hilarious and edgy and generous and impossible to stop reading. Moreover, she misses nothing. Her attention to the seemingly smallest details—material, social, psychological—reveal, as the pages turn, an intricately tooled world that is as familiar as it is dazzling and new."—Heidi Julavits
"The Clasp reads like The Goonies written by Lorrie Moore. A touching but never sentimental portrait of a trio of quasi-adults turning into adult adults, this is one of those rare deeply literary books that also features—a plot! From the shores of Florida to the coast of Normandy, wonderful, unforgettable things happen in this enormously hilarious novel. And they are written in a language so beautiful, I gnashed my teeth at Sloane Crosley's talent. —Gary Shteyngart
"Sloane Crosley's debut novel is hilarious, insightful, and full of characters and situations that only Sloane Crosley could devise. The laugh-out-loud observations and dialogue that make her essays such a delight to read shine through in her fiction too. The Clasp is a gem."—J. Courtney Sullivan
"The Clasp is funny as hell and impossibly smooth reading. It is so hard to make something look that effortless. We all love Sloane for her charming and witty essays, but the truth is, she's got the goods in this form as well."—Charles Bock
author of The Folded Clock Heidi Julavits
I opened The Clasp and immediately realized that I'd been waiting far too long for Sloane Crosley to write a novel. Crosley is a literary addiction. There is no substitute. She is curious. She is smart. She is hilarious and edgy and generous and impossible to stop reading. Moreover, she misses nothing. Her attention to the seemingly smallest details-material, social, psychological-reveals, as the pages turn, an intricately tooled world that is as familiar as it is dazzling and new.
author of Super Sad True Love Story Gary Shteyngart
The Clasp reads like The Goonies written by Lorrie Moore. A touching but never sentimental portrait of a trio of quasi-adults turning into adult adults, this is one of those rare deeply literary books that also features-a plot! From the shores of Florida to the coast of Normandy, wonderful, unforgettable things happen in this enormously hilarious novel. And they are written in a language so beautiful, I gnashed my teeth at Sloane Crosley's talent.
author of The Engagements J. Courtney Sullivan
Sloane Crosley's debut novel is hilarious, insightful, and full of characters and situations that only Sloane Crosley could devise. The laugh-out-loud observations and dialogue that make her essays such a delight to read shine through in her fiction too. The Clasp is a gem.
author of Telegraph Avenue Michael Chabon
I took so much pleasure in every sentence of The Clasp, fell so completely under the spell of its narrative tone-equal parts bite and tenderness, a dash of rue-and became so caught up in the charmingly dented protagonists and their off-kilter caper that the book's emotional power, building steadily and quietly, caught me off guard, and left me with a lump in my throat.
The Onion on How Did You Get This Number
An intimate anthropologist...Crosley returns wiser without losing her sharpness.
The Boston Globe on How Did You Get This Number
Crosley is engaging and energetic...She is a fountain of observations, apt metaphors, and escalating wit.
Elle on How Did You Get This Number
What puts Crosley over is her preternatural ability to slip into her offbeat interior world-and cajole us into going there too.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer on How Did You Get This Number
In the battle for space on my family-room bookshelf, Sloane Crosley's "How Did You Get This Number" just pushed David Sedaris to the second-floor stacks....Where "Cake" played strictly for laughs, Crosley finds more balance here - she never slips into parody, and she knows how to keep the mood buoyed, even in moments with pathos.
The Denver Post on How Did You Get This Number
Crosley has been honing her craft since we've seen her last, and the hard work shows. Now, she has mastered the precision of novelistic scene-setting deployed by our greatest practitioners of the American sentimental essay, writers such as Gopnik, Sedaris and, yes, even Thurber.
The Los Angeles Times Book Review on How Did You Get This Number
Crosley responds to everyday absurdities with self-deprecation and an arsenal of metaphors, applying insights like a salve....As she expounds on her various mishaps and anxieties, it all manages to seem like proof that even when she's lost, she knows what she's doing all along.
The New York Times Book Review on How Did You Get This Number
Crosley is like a tap-dancer, lighthearted and showmanlike...but capable of surprising you with the reserves of emotion and keen social observation.
Elle on Sloane Crosley
Now that she's updated the role of ingenue by concocting a bracing cocktail of credulity and crankiness, [she has you wondering] what she might be able to do with a novel.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune on I Was Told There'd Be Cake
With piquant prose, Crosley brings bite to reminiscences of a comfortable childhood in suburban White Plains, N.Y., and her salad days in Manhattan...[she's] that smart, sardonic friend who homes in on the ridiculous aspects of any situation and amplifies them to maximum hilarity.
Daily Candy on I Was Told There'd Be Cake
Although the stories are set in New York, Crosley's plights are universally relatable and described in a voice that's supremely witty and genuine.
People on I Was Told There'd Be Cake
You'll feel as though you're sitting with her at a café, breathlessly waiting to hear what she's going to tell you next.
Newsday on I Was Told There'd Be Cake
Sloane's is a generous, sparkling hilarity...By the end of the book, the flirtation has worked, and you're left desperate for more.
author of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union Michael Chabon
I took so much pleasure in every sentence of The Clasp, fell so completely under the spell of its narrative tone-equal parts bite and tenderness, a dash of rue-and became so caught up in the charmingly dented protagonists and their off-kilter caper that the book's emotional power, building steadily and quietly, caught me off guard, and left me with a lump in my throat.
San Francisco Chronicle on Sloane Crosley
An exciting new talent.
The New York Times Book Review on Sloane Crosley
Charming.
Los Angeles Times on Sloane Crosley
Hilarious.
Library Journal
05/15/2015
This is not Crosley's first book; her smartly funny essay collections such as I Was Told There'd Be Cake (a Thurber Prize finalist) have been New York Times best sellers. But it is her first novel. While attending a college friend's splashy wedding, twentysomethings Kezia, Nathaniel, and Victor learn about a valuable necklace that vanished in Nazi-occupied France, and they're off on a crazy chase that leads them to the estate of Guy de Maupassant, beloved for his classic short story "The Necklace."
Kirkus Reviews
2015-07-15
This debut novel from a bestselling essayist follows an interlinked circle of friends on a quest to find a priceless necklace and regain an even rarer treasure: a genuine connection. This trenchant first novel from the author of I Was Told There'd Be Cake (2008) and How Did You Get This Number (2010) is about a necklace; Guy de Maupassant's classic short story, "The Necklace"; and an interconnected circle of friends from college who, like beads on a broken necklace, have dispersed and rolled off on different paths. Some of these young people have gotten lost—or lost some essential part of themselves—along the way as they hurtle toward their 30s, watching their 20s blur by and disappear in the rearview mirror. While the luckier (wealthier, more successful) of them marry and move toward parenthood, three of the pals—hapless, unemployed data-crunching Brooklynite Victor; charismatic yet not quite successful LA screenwriter Nathaniel; and clever, spritelike Kezia, whose job working for an offbeat jewelry designer in Manhattan is, she fears, hardening her soul—all single, are beginning to wonder if they're wasting their lives pursuing goals as false and worthless as a paste gemstone. Crosley's smart, sardonic, sometimes-zany, yet also sensitive story is told from the alternating perspectives of these three linked characters, taking the readers along as they reunite first for a friend's wedding in Miami and then again for a road trip in France, setting off from Paris in pursuit of, yes, a priceless necklace but also of things far more valuable: the truth about themselves and one another, a genuine sense of purpose (or, at least, an antidote to their approaching anhedonia), and, perhaps most precious of all, a connection to one another. This novel about a chain of interlinked friends on the brink of their 30s has a few overly manufactured plot elements but overall is a real gem.
