BOOK REVIEW: Pregaming Grief by Danielle Chelosky

"Is this the part of our hanging out where you start to hate me?"

Danielle Chelosky

Pregaming Grief

By Danielle Chelosky

Short Flight/Long Drive Press

206 pgs

I first came across Danielle Chelosky on X/Twitter while looking at music stuff.  She had some funny tweets and some interesting takes on the current music scene.  

So I followed her. She was a music critic, apparently.  Early 20s.  She was also part of the alt-lit world.  She tended to overshare on X and was pretty fearless in her cultural commentary.  She seemed to be some sort of new hybrid online personality.  I didn’t know what she was.

So then I saw she had a novel coming out and I was curious what kind of book such a person would write.  So I asked for a review copy. 

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The novel came in the mail, in gauzy pink wrapping paper.  Some glitter and stickers fell out as I opened it. 

The book itself looked nice.  It was small (6” x 4.5”) and square shaped.  But good quality printing.  I’d guess about 50k words.  I started reading.  The first couple pages were kind of nuts, to be honest, which wasn’t surprising.  

When the story begins, the narrator is 19? 20?  In the very first sentence she is crying in a Brooklyn Café.  We quickly learn she is prone to extreme emotional states.  Is she genuinely unwell or is it just that she’s so young and feels so intensely?  

That question is the primary tension of the novel.

Later, we find out she’s a student at Sarah Lawrence, which is a prestigious college outside New York City.  She’s originally from Long Island.  She also hangs out/lives at times in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  So we know there is at least some normalcy to her life.

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But back to the opening scene:  the reason she is crying in the café is because her relationship with her older, troubled, heroin-addict boyfriend is coming to a tragic end.  

They’re both still hopelessly in love. But fate and (his) rehab are pulling them apart. To numb the pain, they are both hooking up with other people.  The resulting sexual tension/torture is highly addictive.  

The narrator tries to distract herself by getting falling-down drunk at punk shows.

Everyone was smoking cigarettes in the back.  I stumbled outside, the heel of my right boot nearly torn off.  Someone put a finger though the frames of my glasses mid- conversation and touched the side of my nose, and I gasped, realizing one of the lenses had been knocked out.