Quick Take
- Narration: Sloane Crosley self-narrates with the wry, slightly incredulous register that defines her prose, the voice that reviewers compare to Dorothy Parker meets David Sedaris is present in full.
- Themes: Young womanhood in New York, travel as minor catastrophe, the comedy of adult social navigation
- Mood: Buoyant and wry, like a long brunch that keeps producing better stories
- Verdict: Crosley’s second essay collection demonstrates a matured voice that can do more than situational comedy, the travelogue sections in particular reveal a writer moving toward something richer.
I discovered Sloane Crosley on a summer afternoon while looking for something to make a flight feel shorter, and I emerged from the plane having laughed at a Portuguese clown story and felt slightly embarrassed about the volume of my in-seat reaction. That is the Crosley experience: her essays are calibrated to produce laughter in environments where laughter is mildly inconvenient, which is arguably the best kind. How Did You Get This Number is her second essay collection, following the sensational I Was Told There’d Be Cake, and while comparisons to the debut are inevitable, this collection demonstrates a writer who has expanded considerably beyond the parameters of the first book.
The sequel question for a successful essay collection is always whether the voice can sustain itself across a second volume or whether it was a one-time artifact of a particular moment and circumstance. Crosley answers this with some authority. Where Cake was grounded primarily in the indignity of New York City entry-level life, How Did You Get This Number takes her narrator to Paris, Portugal, Alaska, and back again, and the voice travels well. The specific quality the synopsis identifies, that Crosley’s sensibility has become “quicker and sharper to the point, more complex and lasting in the emotions it explores,” is accurate, if slightly formal as a description of what actually happens on the page.
Portugal, Clowns, and the Method of the Stumble
The essay that generates the most sustained comedy in the collection involves Crosley choosing Portugal as a travel destination by spinning a globe and putting down her finger, then falling in with a group of Portuguese clowns in a way she did not anticipate and could not have arranged. This is Crosley’s central method: she places herself in a situation through some combination of whimsy and poor planning, and then observes, with precise fidelity, exactly what happens. The comedy comes not from exaggeration but from the accuracy of the observation. Reviewer “Dash” names the Portugal essay among favorites, calling Crosley’s writing “witty, New York funny”, and the Portugal material is precisely where the New York sensibility produces its funniest results when exported.
The Alaska essay operates differently. The grizzly bear cub who intrudes on a bachelorette party with bear bells on the bridesmaids’ ponytails is the kind of detail you cannot invent. Crosley’s instinct is to report rather than embellish, and the Alaska material benefits from this: the genuine strangeness of the situation is funnier than any constructed version could be. The essay also marks the point where the collection begins to acknowledge that Crosley’s relationships, with friends, with family, with the geography of places she has known, have become more complicated than the early New York essays required her to be. This is the “lasting in the emotions” quality the synopsis identifies, and it is real.
New York, Revisited with Earned Distance
The New York essays are the most accessible entry point for listeners unfamiliar with Crosley’s work, and they are also where she is most directly competing with her first collection. New apartments, taxi rides gone wrong, the specific texture of Manhattan social life, these are her home territory. What differentiates the second collection is that the narrator seems to have acquired fond distance from the city that was pure anxiety in Cake. She still finds New York a source of material, but the material has changed register: less the bewilderment of the newcomer, more the wry observation of someone who has been in the apartment long enough to understand the building’s patterns. Reviewer EJ describes the collection as “terrifically funny” and “a nice, relaxing read”, both of which are accurate as baseline expectations. This is not comedy that demands anything difficult from you.
Six Hours and the Essay Format
At six hours and thirty minutes, this is a comfortable multi-session listen, and the essay structure means you are never obligated to remember plot threads between sittings. Each piece is complete on its own terms. Crosley’s self-narration does what the best self-narration does: it makes the prose sound like speech rather than text being read aloud, because her prose is already written to be heard rather than seen. The “perfect witticism” the synopsis mentions is a quality of her writing at the sentence level, a tendency to end observations with the single most economical and accurate phrase available, and this is exactly the quality that rewards audio. Reviewer stjane describes laughing “uncontrollably” while reading, which sets appropriate expectations for what the audiobook delivers.
Who Should Listen / Who Should Skip
Fans of David Sedaris, Jenny Lawson, and similar first-person observational humor writers will find Crosley a natural companion. The New York orientation is less limiting than it might seem, the travel essays in particular demonstrate her range. Listeners who prefer humor grounded in plot or extended narrative rather than essay-form observation may find the looseness of the structure unsatisfying. But for listeners who enjoy the company of a writer who is both funny and interesting to think with, Crosley at this stage in her development is exactly that.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to have read I Was Told There’d Be Cake first to appreciate this collection?
No. The collections share a narrator and a sensibility, but each essay in How Did You Get This Number stands completely alone. You will miss no narrative context by starting here, though fans of Cake will recognize the evolved voice and may want to read the earlier collection afterward for comparison.
How does Crosley’s narration compare to a professional audiobook narrator reading the same material?
Crosley’s prose is written to sound like her specific voice, the timing, the asides, the characteristic sentence structures are calibrated to her own delivery. A professional narrator could perform the technical requirements competently, but the essays are written from the inside of a particular personality, and Crosley narrating them closes the loop between intention and execution.
Are the travel essays (Paris, Portugal, Alaska) the strongest material, or are the New York pieces?
Reviewer responses suggest the travel pieces, particularly the Portugal essay, generate the most memorable comedy, the unfamiliarity of the settings pushes Crosley’s observational instincts to work harder. The New York essays are more comfortable but face higher competition from similar material in the first collection. Both types appear throughout the six-hour runtime.
How has Crosley’s voice changed between her debut and this collection?
The second collection is more knowing and emotionally honest than the debut. Where the first book ran on the bewilderment of a newcomer finding New York difficult and strange, this one benefits from accumulated experience, the narrator has been in the city long enough to understand it, and that shift changes the comedy’s texture from anxious observation to fond, slightly incredulous mastery.
