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Crazy Sorrow
A lyrical novel, spanning four decades in New York City, about a couple torn apart and the lengths to which they will go to be reunited.
Vince Passaro’s first novel, 2002’s Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, was a provocative book that explored the darkest human emotions and the traumas of mental illness, sexual assault, and murder. Now, nearly 20 years later, Passaro is back with his follow-up, Crazy Sorrow, a novel that is equally explosive and more grand in scope.
The story opens in the shadow of the new World Trade Center, on July 4, 1976, when students George and Anna meet on the weed- and wine-fueled night of the nation’s Bicentennial celebration. George, haunted by his upbringing, instantly falls for the sensual, magnetic Anna. Soon, they couple up, dropping acid, swapping music, exploring the city and each other. Yet their romance is short-lived, and they go their own ways.
Passaro chronicles the next four decades, following George and Anna through their various relationships, their sex lives both youthful and mature, their failed marriages, and the travails of parenthood and their careers. Yet as the years go by, one thing remains The former lovers wonder what happened to each other. Finally, miraculously, they reconnect as the new century is beginning, only to discover that history itself will have a say in whether they can stay together.
Crazy Sorrow is an ambitious examination of the forces that draw people together and drive them apart - yet it also expands beyond the points of view of its characters to capture the movement of time and to reveal a living, breathing New York that is both constantly changing and always familiar. Crazy Sorrow stands as Passaro’s powerful love letter to his characters and to the city that has shaped them.
Vince Passaro’s first novel, 2002’s Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, was a provocative book that explored the darkest human emotions and the traumas of mental illness, sexual assault, and murder. Now, nearly 20 years later, Passaro is back with his follow-up, Crazy Sorrow, a novel that is equally explosive and more grand in scope.
The story opens in the shadow of the new World Trade Center, on July 4, 1976, when students George and Anna meet on the weed- and wine-fueled night of the nation’s Bicentennial celebration. George, haunted by his upbringing, instantly falls for the sensual, magnetic Anna. Soon, they couple up, dropping acid, swapping music, exploring the city and each other. Yet their romance is short-lived, and they go their own ways.
Passaro chronicles the next four decades, following George and Anna through their various relationships, their sex lives both youthful and mature, their failed marriages, and the travails of parenthood and their careers. Yet as the years go by, one thing remains The former lovers wonder what happened to each other. Finally, miraculously, they reconnect as the new century is beginning, only to discover that history itself will have a say in whether they can stay together.
Crazy Sorrow is an ambitious examination of the forces that draw people together and drive them apart - yet it also expands beyond the points of view of its characters to capture the movement of time and to reveal a living, breathing New York that is both constantly changing and always familiar. Crazy Sorrow stands as Passaro’s powerful love letter to his characters and to the city that has shaped them.
464 pages, Hardcover
Published September 14, 2021
21 people are currently reading
515 people want to read
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September 25, 2021
The World Trade Center towers heave into view on the very first page of Vince Passaro’s “Crazy Sorrow.” It’s July 4, 1976, and college students Anna and George, soon to be lovers, are heading for New York’s riverbank to check out the tall ships and fireworks.
The symbolism is unmistakable, and so we’re not surprised when the towers reappear a few chapters later -- “twin statements of absolute black when in darkness, tremendously grave” -- as this expansive novel hurtles through the years, toward the massive buildings’ infamous demise.
Passaro, author of 2002′s “Violence, Nudity, Adult Content,” has big ambitions here. He tracks Anna and George -- at first together, but then at length apart -- through sexually liberated, increasingly post-industrial New York. The city soon reveals itself as the novel’s truest hero -- and villain -- thrilling Anna and George and its millions of other lovers, but also making them doubt themselves.
Passaro deftly captures the changing of eras, how it sneaks up on us. A couple years out of college, the 1980s now underway, Anna finds that the hairy free spirits she’d been catching in the dating pool have suddenly disappeared, replaced by clean-shaven All-Americans with their eyes on the future. “There had been no Young Businessmen,” Anna realizes, “four and three and even two years ago: So where had they all come from?”
Passaro can write, his prose often starkly incisive. He describes George running into an old girlfriend with whom he’d once haunted the punk club CBGB, discovering with a jolt that “she was living in a giant building in Kips Bay, the ink still showing on the back of one arm but she wore none of the metal; she’d had a kid, was married to some guy in marketing.”
There’s a lot of sex in “Crazy Sorrow,” it should be pointed out, a lot of torsos “bucking” and “faces wrought, that look of agony that is not agony.” Almost every lover Anna and George have over two decades is given the spotlight in bed, their turn-ons and preferred positions and physical sensations explicitly rendered. This probably reveals more about the author than it does about his characters.
For some of these characters -- including prominent ones, like George’s wife, Marina -- this is pretty much all we learn about them, which is a shame. But Passaro wants to keep the focus on Anna and George’s connection: how, though separated for years, they linger in each other’s minds “in the way of a religious idea from one’s youth, a sense of faith that, while not practiced, one never quite abandons.”
“Crazy Sorrow” is essentially plotless, and it covers a lot of ground, its concerns ranging from pop music to gentrification, global capitalism to family tragedy. Up pop the Twin Towers again, a landmark to the power of greed but also, surprisingly, home to a small artists’ colony, with one artist wiring the windows to record “the creaks, the groans and sway.”
Ultimately, though, the novel is about something rather simple: nostalgia -- crazy sorrow -- the feeling that it’s all slipped away, the city of your wild youth, your idealistic dreams, your most meaningful relationship. It confirms something we all know but want confirmed: that you never really get over your first love, and that that’s OK.
The symbolism is unmistakable, and so we’re not surprised when the towers reappear a few chapters later -- “twin statements of absolute black when in darkness, tremendously grave” -- as this expansive novel hurtles through the years, toward the massive buildings’ infamous demise.
Passaro, author of 2002′s “Violence, Nudity, Adult Content,” has big ambitions here. He tracks Anna and George -- at first together, but then at length apart -- through sexually liberated, increasingly post-industrial New York. The city soon reveals itself as the novel’s truest hero -- and villain -- thrilling Anna and George and its millions of other lovers, but also making them doubt themselves.
Passaro deftly captures the changing of eras, how it sneaks up on us. A couple years out of college, the 1980s now underway, Anna finds that the hairy free spirits she’d been catching in the dating pool have suddenly disappeared, replaced by clean-shaven All-Americans with their eyes on the future. “There had been no Young Businessmen,” Anna realizes, “four and three and even two years ago: So where had they all come from?”
Passaro can write, his prose often starkly incisive. He describes George running into an old girlfriend with whom he’d once haunted the punk club CBGB, discovering with a jolt that “she was living in a giant building in Kips Bay, the ink still showing on the back of one arm but she wore none of the metal; she’d had a kid, was married to some guy in marketing.”
There’s a lot of sex in “Crazy Sorrow,” it should be pointed out, a lot of torsos “bucking” and “faces wrought, that look of agony that is not agony.” Almost every lover Anna and George have over two decades is given the spotlight in bed, their turn-ons and preferred positions and physical sensations explicitly rendered. This probably reveals more about the author than it does about his characters.
For some of these characters -- including prominent ones, like George’s wife, Marina -- this is pretty much all we learn about them, which is a shame. But Passaro wants to keep the focus on Anna and George’s connection: how, though separated for years, they linger in each other’s minds “in the way of a religious idea from one’s youth, a sense of faith that, while not practiced, one never quite abandons.”
“Crazy Sorrow” is essentially plotless, and it covers a lot of ground, its concerns ranging from pop music to gentrification, global capitalism to family tragedy. Up pop the Twin Towers again, a landmark to the power of greed but also, surprisingly, home to a small artists’ colony, with one artist wiring the windows to record “the creaks, the groans and sway.”
Ultimately, though, the novel is about something rather simple: nostalgia -- crazy sorrow -- the feeling that it’s all slipped away, the city of your wild youth, your idealistic dreams, your most meaningful relationship. It confirms something we all know but want confirmed: that you never really get over your first love, and that that’s OK.
November 7, 2021
Liked for the imagery of New York through the years and how it compared to New York now. Didn’t feel like Anna was developed enough as a character - never felt like I could truly grasp her or George - they were characters of the time that changed through the decades which was probably the point.
Loved the way the lovers were described - never thought of humans in this way - super visual.
Loved the way the lovers were described - never thought of humans in this way - super visual.
October 14, 2021
I think if you ever lived in NYC, you would love this book. It was complex for me. Gen X being lumped in with Boomers was the first transgression.
Read
January 9, 2022Overdosed from the testosterone-fueled writing; in recovery and am reading Francesca Marciano's short story collection "The Other Language."
August 1, 2022
On July 4, 1976, George and Anna meet in the shadow of the twin towers during a huge celebration. The book chronicles the next four decades as they both wonder about each other and their short lived relationship as well as the changes NYC experienced.
Part I I spent wondering what I was reading. It was full of drugs, sex, and seemingly everything but the kitchen sink, including both a dictionary and thesaurus. Part II was definitely better, showing signs of an actual plot. I’m still trying to figure out if Part III actually Had a plot, or if it was just a political rant of the current state of affairs and how he thinks we got there.
Part I I spent wondering what I was reading. It was full of drugs, sex, and seemingly everything but the kitchen sink, including both a dictionary and thesaurus. Part II was definitely better, showing signs of an actual plot. I’m still trying to figure out if Part III actually Had a plot, or if it was just a political rant of the current state of affairs and how he thinks we got there.
February 24, 2024
I finished this today and I have the feeling I may like it even less the more I think about it. But! Crazy Sorrow. A title like that…I have to say, it works on me every time.
[I’ve already done the usual dance of rating the book a 3 straight upon finishing, immediately going back and changing that to a 2, then feeling such a way about all of it that I have to write this sentence to explain myself. It always feels so punitive to give a “low rating” to a novel but then, as always, I remind myself that nothing is real and all I have in this world are my little thoughts and opinions (therefore I persist, etc).
3 stars because it is a work of art, crafted by an intelligent human being, who presumably lives on this Earth. 2 stars because I did not really like it. Okay? Fuck.]
[I must further digress to say that usually I find the whole idea of men being incapable of writing about women without being Weird (and inevitably saying something deeply irregular about the behavior or appearance of breasts) to be so clichéd it’s nearly meaningless -- the kind of thing said only by an unserious person. But this book…In this book, there are some egregious examples of A Man Writing About Women Weirdly.]
Despite all the characters/events/experiences/ideas, there is an emotional remove and coldness that does not pair with what is happening narratively. I could not connect.
There’s simply a lot jammed in and processed together, whether it quite works or not. A lot of winding, extending, expanding sentences that lose you. A lingering aftertaste of pages gone unedited.
I did not hate this book. But Crazy Sorrow is, for large portions, a novel of serial depictions of different people having sex (that is described in fair detail) until someone gets 9/11ed.
I don’t consider that a spoiler, either! You can’t have your novel described as some kind of decades spanning high-brow NYC will-they-won’t-they and explicitly write about the World Trade Center in the first pages and not expect your readers to discern, with zero hesitation, that here is a novel in which a person will most definitely get 9/11ed.
[I’ve already done the usual dance of rating the book a 3 straight upon finishing, immediately going back and changing that to a 2, then feeling such a way about all of it that I have to write this sentence to explain myself. It always feels so punitive to give a “low rating” to a novel but then, as always, I remind myself that nothing is real and all I have in this world are my little thoughts and opinions (therefore I persist, etc).
3 stars because it is a work of art, crafted by an intelligent human being, who presumably lives on this Earth. 2 stars because I did not really like it. Okay? Fuck.]
[I must further digress to say that usually I find the whole idea of men being incapable of writing about women without being Weird (and inevitably saying something deeply irregular about the behavior or appearance of breasts) to be so clichéd it’s nearly meaningless -- the kind of thing said only by an unserious person. But this book…In this book, there are some egregious examples of A Man Writing About Women Weirdly.]
Despite all the characters/events/experiences/ideas, there is an emotional remove and coldness that does not pair with what is happening narratively. I could not connect.
There’s simply a lot jammed in and processed together, whether it quite works or not. A lot of winding, extending, expanding sentences that lose you. A lingering aftertaste of pages gone unedited.
I did not hate this book. But Crazy Sorrow is, for large portions, a novel of serial depictions of different people having sex (that is described in fair detail) until someone gets 9/11ed.
I don’t consider that a spoiler, either! You can’t have your novel described as some kind of decades spanning high-brow NYC will-they-won’t-they and explicitly write about the World Trade Center in the first pages and not expect your readers to discern, with zero hesitation, that here is a novel in which a person will most definitely get 9/11ed.
November 28, 2021
The book starts off with a bang -- literally -- and chronicles the sex lives of the two protagonists, who met at Columbia/Barnard in 1976, until Anna perishes during 9-11. The book should have ended at that point, but Passaro keeps going for a third section and another 20 years, with the rather dull male protagonist, George. The conceit is that George was the founding partner of Starbucks (called Brown & Co.). Frankly, the Howard Schultz-like character was more interesting than George, who is content to become uber-rich, have a son (who is a perfect Upper West Side caricature himself), and then keep trucking along until the book just ends with no real purpose, other than a brief nod to Waiting for Godot. Yes, Mr. Passaro, we all die at the end, and we don't know when. The scenes frm Columbia in the mid 1970s were terrific, and for those who lived there at the time will find nostalgia in the references to Take-ome, Mama Joy's, Tom's, the West End, and countless dive bars that George drank at. The book could have been edited down a 100 or so pages and know would have known differently. The death of Anna at 9/11 was telegraphed chapters beforehand. Her death scene was well written (imagined), and Passaro deserves credit for that. On the whole, the book had its moments, and he clearly loves to hear himself think out loud as a writer, and pontificate. Whether you want to slog through 400 plus pages is up to you.
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April 26, 2023I wouldn't go as far as to call this "the last great American novel", as the review that convinced me to give this book a read did. At some points the prose here made me understand why Cusk said that writing fiction is embarrassing -- some of these ornate, almost masturbatory sentences make you feel grateful for today's pared-down, telegraphic autofictional style. I do appreciate the depth and tridimensionality the book gives Anna and George, but I think the last third, with the whole 9/11 subplot (the section written in all cursive...) is the weakest, both style- and drama-wise. Maybe we do soften as we age. Ultimately my issue is that Anna and George are perfectly modern individuals -- none are under the illusion that they are each other's destiny, even as they find their way to each other over and over again. There are other lovers, wives, children, exes -- the only proof of their love, besides the short years of dating they share over the years, is that they at times think of the other with longing. They are hypermobile particles in the sea of human relationships, no longlasting or deep ties to anyone (including, I'd say, each other); they are totally atomized. Not sure how I feel about this yet
edit: BUT the first third was glorious. maybe it's the same reason why I love the second book of the napolitan quartet so much -- they just like me (in their early 20s!) fr. the sorrow be crazy...
edit: BUT the first third was glorious. maybe it's the same reason why I love the second book of the napolitan quartet so much -- they just like me (in their early 20s!) fr. the sorrow be crazy...
December 1, 2023
What this book does better than others is sensation and physicality - bodies, the sound of speech, physical pain - it does well at getting to that more fundamental physical layer of things that is latent in an event or occurrence. The occurrences that house these physical sensations are also really compelling in this book.
Passaro is a kind of phenomenologist without the overbearing self-consciousness and disinterested analysis that phenomenological text usually has.
The dialogue is a bit hard to follow at times - I had the impression that some of the characters didn’t care if they were understood. I wasn’t sure if this disinterest was coming from a place of playfulness and joi de vivre (experimenting with words), or if it was coming from a place of being removed or aloof from the person they are talking to. Perhaps the two are not exclusive.
This book is also insanely horny and somehow describes so many different emotions and flavours in sex. It was recommended as “the best” sex writing you’ll ever read and I think I agree.
Passaro is a kind of phenomenologist without the overbearing self-consciousness and disinterested analysis that phenomenological text usually has.
The dialogue is a bit hard to follow at times - I had the impression that some of the characters didn’t care if they were understood. I wasn’t sure if this disinterest was coming from a place of playfulness and joi de vivre (experimenting with words), or if it was coming from a place of being removed or aloof from the person they are talking to. Perhaps the two are not exclusive.
This book is also insanely horny and somehow describes so many different emotions and flavours in sex. It was recommended as “the best” sex writing you’ll ever read and I think I agree.
April 6, 2025
This is a case of a capable writer producing an entertaining, but ultimately not very good book. Vince Pizzaro aims here to deliver one of those big New York novels that capture an era. And he jams in many of the touchstone events from the 1970s up to nearly today. He also excels at sketching the history of a relationship in two or three pages.
But the characters, to rely on an overused phrase, don’t come to life. George and Anna meet cute and banter well, during the bicentennial no less, sharing a joint and watching the tall ships and fireworks, just steps from the doomed Twin Towers where Anna would later work. Like Columbia undergraduates of a different era, they are literate, quick with the right verse and knowledgeable about the right music. Even so, neither is all that smart. Their lives amount to amassing formidable numbers of sexual partners and, despite considerable material success, indulging in tedious musings about the evils of capitalism.
3 stars.
But the characters, to rely on an overused phrase, don’t come to life. George and Anna meet cute and banter well, during the bicentennial no less, sharing a joint and watching the tall ships and fireworks, just steps from the doomed Twin Towers where Anna would later work. Like Columbia undergraduates of a different era, they are literate, quick with the right verse and knowledgeable about the right music. Even so, neither is all that smart. Their lives amount to amassing formidable numbers of sexual partners and, despite considerable material success, indulging in tedious musings about the evils of capitalism.
3 stars.
November 28, 2021
I'm envisioning a cover of this book where you have the New York skyline but, instead of two towers, there are two legs - standing, open, bare, and inviting continuing up up up to God knows what. A teardrop running down one. Maybe a tear. Maybe it's... well... let's just say there was a lot of sex in this book.
I came across this book in Harpers. There was an excerpt in the Readings. (Harpers is worth the subscription, by the way). I was immediately taken. It was profound and jarring in the way of all 9/11 lit - but also in a much more specific and personal sense or style. And while there were moments - maybe entire sections that lacked movement, the deepening waters more than made up for them.
I came across this book in Harpers. There was an excerpt in the Readings. (Harpers is worth the subscription, by the way). I was immediately taken. It was profound and jarring in the way of all 9/11 lit - but also in a much more specific and personal sense or style. And while there were moments - maybe entire sections that lacked movement, the deepening waters more than made up for them.
July 18, 2022
Crazy Sorrow and a whole lot of sex scenes. Book covers a ~50-year period in NYC, primarily told via an on-again, off-again relationship that is a great character study. Having lived in NYC for 13 of those years and being not a lot younger than the main characters, I really appreciated how Passaro captured the times and place. But Passaro clearly thinks that sex sells, because there is enough to satisfy horny men who are waiting for the next edition of Penthouse Forum. It's not that the sex was overly raunchy (tho some of it is) but Passaro seemed to rely on sex scenes as a narrative device too often.
I was listening to the book and might have preferred it had I been able to just skim the sex scenes. The 9/11 scenes were exceptionally well done
I was listening to the book and might have preferred it had I been able to just skim the sex scenes. The 9/11 scenes were exceptionally well done
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 26, 2023
First, full disclosure I did study creative writing with the author back in college. This is a literary novel about love and life and bad timing and/or fate, on many levels. Written in a more experimental style, so warning, there are often no quotes around the dialogue. But the dialogue and the language in descriptions is razor sharp as we follow the two-2 main characters from 1976 into the post Sept. 11, 2001 world of New York City, and all the decade ups and downs in between. New York City plays more than a minor role here--not just a back drop but more like a universal 3rd person character itself.
December 30, 2025
Picked this off the NYPL shelf and went in knowing nothing but literally what’s on the inside cover. In the last third of the book, when it’s taking place in the mid 90s, I think I began to realize the book was published in 2021 and 9/11 would definitely be a part of the ending but truthfully, I suppose the signs were always there. The commentary on our relationship with capitalism in America as we age was really interesting for me, I suppose sometime halfway through the emphasis on sex and love in the beginning is just replaced by sex and money and it’s almost disappointing that we never return to those love vibes but… that’s life I guess.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 13, 2023
George and Anna meet in New York City in 1976 and remain each other's 'one-that-got-away.' New York is an essential character in this novel, and Passaro takes the reader through the city's development through the 80's, 90's, and early 2000s. There is a lot of sex in this novel, but done tastefully. The sex scenes never felt embarrassing, and maintained their eroticism and passion. George and Anna are compelling characters, though we learn more about and thus feel closer to George.
She even had moments, looking at George, most of the time when she was looking at his enormous uncomplicated back, like a bricklayer’s—she had moments when a near-tears feeling of love for him came up in her throat and hurt her eyes.
For all the trouble women encountered with the male gaze, with men objectifying them, the true connoisseurs of female beauty were women themselves. It was they who most ardently appreciated physical beauty—not the enticement and rapture of flesh that men saw and dreamed of, but actual beauty of bone and shape and posture and gesture. They saw in it a moral achievement, even a touch of the divine.
She even had moments, looking at George, most of the time when she was looking at his enormous uncomplicated back, like a bricklayer’s—she had moments when a near-tears feeling of love for him came up in her throat and hurt her eyes.
For all the trouble women encountered with the male gaze, with men objectifying them, the true connoisseurs of female beauty were women themselves. It was they who most ardently appreciated physical beauty—not the enticement and rapture of flesh that men saw and dreamed of, but actual beauty of bone and shape and posture and gesture. They saw in it a moral achievement, even a touch of the divine.
July 31, 2022
This read at times like memoir, at times like poetry. A rarefied time and place creates a unique and likely doomed romance; larger-than-life turning points move the main characters beyond their control. I see this writer as a keen chronicler of times that people in our boomer generation lived through. A very evocative narrative. You have to know Bob Dylan's music to get this.
May 3, 2023
I spent most of the book wondering where it was going. Its opening immediately lets the reader know the end will be about 9/11, but it was so ineffective, it seemed like the author used it as an emotional cop out to make up for his inadequate writing. I don’t know what the point of the main character basically inventing Starbucks was, other than a hundred-page tangent on marketing.
June 11, 2023
Highly ambitious “New York” novel that attempts to encapsulate the life and death of one or two very specific types of Columbia students. Appreciated the author’s passion for the book.
March 20, 2024
Like Normal People for grownups
July 23, 2025
Not enough people are reading this. It’s sexy, complex and perfectly portrays a crash out many of us have coming.
August 15, 2025
Hits the edgy spot that is appropriately not sadistic. Well written. Sometimes a slice of NYC is all you need.
November 26, 2025
10/10 would read again
January 12, 2024
i love reading books set in nyc but this one didn’t really do it for me. i got easily frustrated by the characters and it made me really scared and depressed considering it’s about two people that never really got to experience each other, filled with a lot of divorce and not being content with the way their lives unfolded. it also annoys me when nyc stories are set uo in the 80’s into the 2000’s because it’s so easy to predict what’s going to happen when there’s 20 pages left and we’re set in august of 2001. it was written well and an interesting story but i just wasn’t satisfied with it
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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