The Clasp - Tapa dura

"[Crosley’s] prose is the literary equivalent of a light-as-air soufflé, made from recipes by Candace Bushnell and a young Donna Tartt...consistently witty...a real comic talent" (Independent on Sunday)

"Seriously impressive...as smart as it is funny" (Glamour)

"An entertaining homage to Maupassant...There is barely a page of the novel that doesn’t glitter with some nugget of wit or wisdom" (Guardian)

"A thing of pure joy...The Clasp is an absolute delight" (Stylist)

"A shrewd exploration of the modern-day late-quarter-life crisis...her signature wit is sharp as ever here. [Crosley] 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 – people circling the age of 30 who foster undue fondness for the retro culture of their youth...For all its humor, Crosley’s prose is equally sharp in delineating her character’s despair...in this highly comic, highly affecting novel" (The New York Times)

"Crosley’s debut novel showcases much of the same razor-sharp wit as her New York Times bestselling essay collections...she nails it" (The Independent)

"What results is 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. Crosley, who made her name as a high-profile book publicist, and then as an essayist, chronicling her humorous escapades in the city first for the Village Voice and then in two best-selling collections (2008’s I Was Told There’d Be Cake and 2010’s How Did You Get This Number), brings both sets of skills to bear on The Clasp. Fans of her 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 US)

"A smart, witty read with a lot of heart" (Red)

"Brilliant writing and astutely drawn characters...I couldn’t put it down" (Grazia)

"Sharp and funny" (Good Housekeeping)

Reunited for the extravagant wedding of a college friend: Kezia, the second-in-command to an eccentric jewellery designer; Nathaniel, the former literary cool kid now selling his wares in Hollywood; and Victor, who has just been fired from a middling search engine. They soon slip back into their old roles – Victor loves Kezia. Kezia loves Nathaniel. Nathaniel loves Nathaniel.

In the midst of all this semi-merriment, Victor has a bizarre encounter with the mother of the groom that triggers an obsession over a legendary necklace. Lacking employment or any other kind of tie, Victor leaves New York in search of the jewellery, supposedly stashed away in an obscure small-town chateau. And, in a bid to save him from ruining whatever is left of his young ambitions, Kezia and Nathaniel set out to find him.

Heartfelt, suspenseful and told with Sloane Crosley’s inimitable spark and wit, THE CLASP is a story of friends struggling to fit together when their lives haven’t gone as planned and of learning how to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fake.

‘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 completely caught up in the charmingly dented protagonists and their off-kilter cape, 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