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With
the litany of memoirs and essay collections coming out each
year attempting to reflect the state of life at the quarter-century,
the bulk are hit and miss tales with the usual subjects: independent
and oftentimes metro city life, tepid relationships, impossible
jobs and the struggle to come up with a life plan that starts
tomorrow. In I Was Told There'd Be Cake, Sloane Crosley
hits on all of these subjects but with the casual perspective
of a best friend; she keeps it simple without losing any of
the self-effacing humor that made it all worth living through.
In one
essay, Crosley admits to a slightly disturbing collection
of plastic ponies, relics from past first dates who have said
to Crosley, "I have something for you." Take note: if your
answer is the author's seemingly nervous automatic quip, "a
pony," you may end up with a drawer straight out of a My
Little Pony nightmare.
In The
Ursula Cookie, Crosley recounts her days as an assistant
to a book-publishing exec. First amiable and empathetic, her
boss becomes unsurprisingly demanding and cold; it is a first-real-job
experience not to be rivaled. In a moment of what she later
refers to as "temporary insanity," Crosley ignores the don't-bake-for-your-co-workers
maxim and spends a night in a baking frenzy, producing, among
other things, a sugar cookie in the likeness of said boss.
Though he is modestly amused, the already-strained relationship
sours into communication via post-its and Crosley's ill-timed
but inevitable resignation on September 11, 2001.
Beside
the hilarity and profusion of awkward moments in this collection,
there are also personal realizations that seem to unfold genuinely,
and that is one of the best parts about this book: it doesn't
feel forced. In a moment of postnasal weakness, Crosley calls
herself out as a fraud after noticing her varied and well-read
bookshelf and realizing she has not read a single book in
over a year. Even the most seemingly unbelievable moments—being
the surprise maid of honor at a long-lost friend's wedding
or getting locked out of two apartments in one day, for instance—don't
necessarily rely on the funny moments for substance.
Crosley
also recounts what it's like to be young at the turn of the
21st century, a unique perspective with just the right amount
of clumsy follies, brave leaps and the growth that comes when
you hesitate to say what you really think. In Bring-Your-Machete-To-Work
Day, Crosley muses on the once-popular Oregon Trail
computer game which, she says, "provided me with the illusion
I was actually going somewhere." Bored with playing the game
in earnest, Crosley quickly renames avatars after hated middle
school teachers and establishes a more violent working order.
"Eventually a message would pop up in the middle of the screen,
framed in a neat box: 'Mrs. Ross has died of dysentery'. This
filled me with glee."
The 15
essays compiled in I Was Told There'd Be Cake are more
than tales of the twentysomething underbelly; they're a sincere
reflection, both sardonic and perceptive, of the people we
once were and the people we've morphed into in our own strange
series of life events. Where most collections hit and miss,
Crosley delivers one blow after the other, almost building
on the momentum of the story before—and that's never
a bad thing.
(May,
2008)
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