An Entertaining and Funny Book
WOSU Book Critic Kassie Rose reviews "I Was Told There’d Be Cake."

by Kassie Rose

Sloane Crosley is the author of "I Was Told There'd Be Cake." It's a collection of humorous essays and her first book.

WOSU book critic Kassie Rose says it's highly entertaining in this review.

Here's a quick description of Sloane Crosley based on what I've culled from her new collection of personal essays – she's forgetful, self-centered, morally lethargic, a bad friend and an imposter.

Fortunately, she's also hilarious.

She observes her young life through an amused lens that refracts common situations into cynical comedy.

I read her essays with a big smile on my face and spontaneously laughed out loud.

In one particularly risible essay, Crosley writes about a kitchen drawer filled with plastic ponies. She worries that, should she leave her apartment and accidently be killed during the day, someone would eventually find the toys -- and then she'd be remembered as an adult with a plastic pony collection.

"The Pony Problem" is not simply a literary comedy routine, rather Crosley employing her richly irreverent and self-aware eye as she wrestles with coming-of-age identity. It's a common theme in these 15 essays that find their material in Crosley's suburban childhood in Westchester County, New York, and young adult city life in Manhattan.

The situations are universal and, sometimes, ridiculous, which makes them all the more delectable.

In one essay she locks herself out of her apartment twice in one day, and in another she fails profoundly under the dictates of a mean boss.

The two longest essays concern her attempt at becoming a volunteer (that's when she's an imposter) and her attempt at being a devoted bridesmaid (that's another time when she's an imposter).

Volunteering at an exhibit of endangered South American buttlerflies, Crosley lies to children, mis-pronounces the insects' Latin names, and unintentionally takes a butterfly home with her attached to her shirt collar.

She doesn't apologize for her screw-ups, rather playfully engages her self-centeredness and weak charitable fervor.

In the essay called "You on a Stick," she endures girlish responsibilities as a bridesmaid.

Her off-the-cuff comments make this essay a joyride, right down to the moment when the bride announces she and the groom plan to change their last name to Universe, as in Mr. and Mrs. Universe. Being the bride's given name is Francine, Crosley gleefully points out the bride's new initials as "F" – well, you figure it out.

Of all the great tales in Crosley's new book, it's those plastic ponies in the kitchen drawer that still speak to me.

Perhaps it's because when I leave the house I sometimes wonder what others would determine about me if they saw the current state of my belongings. Or maybe it's because of Crosley's epiphany in this essay.

The ponies were given to her by almost every guy she had ever dated and she keeps them to nurture the emotional roots of those relationships.

She finally comes to terms with the folly of her sentimentality and gets rid of the ponies, realizing the real proof that she has tried to love and that people have tried to love her back is never going to fit in a kitchen drawer.

"I Was Told There'd Be Cake: Essays by Sloane Crosley" is published by Riverhead Books.

Reviews by WOSU Book Critic Kassie Rose can be heard Mondays at 12:35pm during NPR's "Day To Day" on WOSU 820.

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