The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Crosley, Sloane. Look Alive Out There. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

Sloane Crosley's Look Alive Out There is a collection of 16 essays. Each essay possesses its own subject matter, form, tone, and style. However, Crosley's first person perspective guides the reader through each of these raucous and reflective personal narratives.

The following summary relies upon the present tense and a streamlined mode of explanation.

In "Wheels Up," Crosley is outraged when a man whose girlfriend is in a wheelchair steals her cab on the way to the airport. She initially tries to let the incident go, but realizes that the man has broken some unspoken code of New York social conduct.

In "Outside Voices," Crosley's idyllic life in her new West Village apartment is foiled by her teenage neighbor Jared. Jared spends all of his time socializing and partying in the yard adjacent to Crosley's building. Their proximity thus dissolves the boundaries between public and private space.

In "A Dog Named Humphrey," Crosley's experience appearing on the popular television series Gossip Girl unexpectedly forces her to claim ownership of her identity as an author.

In "You Someday Lucky," Crosley mocks her new coworker's obsession with the Enneagram personality system, until she realizes her attachment to a particular fortune cookie fortune.

In "If You Take the Canoe Out," Crosley is thrilled to get some time out of New York when her friend Margeaux invites her to house-sit for her in Russian River, California. Crosley subconsciously hopes the experience will change her. However, upon returning to New York, she realizes she has only been occupying a parallel version of reality and thus herself.

In "The Chupacabra," Crosley's trip to Vermont in search of a mythical creature forces her into an unexpected encounter with a new reality.

In "Up the Down Volcano," over the course of Crosley's experience climbing Cotopaxi, a mountain in Ecuador, she becomes increasingly frustrated with her guide, Edgardo. When she later learns that Edgardo is heartsick and lonely, she suddenly understands his humanity.

In "The Grape Man," after developing a kinship with her downstairs neighbor, Don, Crosley is unsure how to grieve someone she hardly knows when Don dies.

In "Right Aid," after a drugstore cashier notices she and Crosley have the same birthday, Crosley tries fostering a connection with her.

In "Relative Stranger," when Crosley learns that her mother's cousin Johnny got into the porn industry looking for love, she travels to California to interview him. Johnny tells Crosley about his career, but also gives her worthy advice for her own life.

In "Brace Yourself," Crosley's trip to France to research a novel makes her understand how environment dictates comfort.

In "Immediate Family," when Crosley mistakenly believes one of her elderly neighbors has died, she is forced to reflect upon her unacknowledged ageist tendencies.

In "Cinema of the Confined," Crosley's diagnosis with Ménière’s disease makes her realize her illness could quickly define her life and identity.

In "Wolf," after a man named Al Perkins steals Crosley's domain name, she reflects upon the relationship between her work and her identity. The experience also makes her realize how fragile her identity is, and how protective of it she has been.

In "Our Hour Is Up," an encounter with a grade school classmate 20 years later, makes Crosley think about justice and karma.

In "The Doctor Is a Woman," Crosley decides to get her eggs harvested as a way to stop thinking about whether or not to become a mother. The experience inspires her reflections on the historical relationship between a woman's biology, her future, her worth, and her identity.