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Book Reviewed by:A deeply hopeful YA novel about living with mental illness that's perfect for fans of Girl in Pieces.
Biz knows how to float. She has her people, her posse, her mom and the twins. She has Grace. And she has her dad, who tells her about the little kid she was, and who shouldn't be here but is. So Biz doesn't tell anyone anything. Not about her dark, runaway thoughts, not about kissing Grace or noticing Jasper, the new boy. And she doesn't tell anyone about her dad. Because her dad died when she was seven. And Biz knows how to float, right there on the surface - normal okay regular fine.
But after what happens on the beach - first in the ocean, and then in the sand - the tethers that hold Biz steady come undone. Dad disappears and, with him, all comfort. It might be easier, better, sweeter to float all the way away? Or maybe stay a little longer, find her father, bring him back to her. Or maybe - maybe maybe maybe - there's a third way Biz just can't see yet.
Debut author Helena Fox tells a story about love and grief, about inter-generational mental illness, and how living with it is both a bridge to someone loved and lost and, also, a chasm. She explores the hard and beautiful places loss can take us, and honors those who hold us tightly when the current wants to tug us out to sea.
Excerpt
How It Feels To Float
At three in the morning when I can't sleep, the room ticks over in the dark and all I have for company is the rush of words coming up fast like those racehorses you see on television, poor things, and when their hearts give out they are laid on the ground and shot dead behind a blue sheet.
At three a.m., I think of hearts. I think of candy hearts and carved-tree hearts and hummingbird hearts. I think of hearts in bodies and the rhythm inside us we don't get to choose.
I lay my hand over mine. There it is.
It beatbeats beatbeatbeats skipsabeatbeatbeat
beatbeatbeats.
A heart is a mystery and not a mystery. It hides under ribs, pumping blood. You can pull it out, hold it in your hand.Squeeze. It wants what it wants. It can be made of gold, glass, stone. It can stop anytime.
People scratch hearts into benches, draw them onto fogged windows, tattoo them on their skin. Believe the story they tell themselves: that hearts are somehow bigger than muscle, that we are ...
This story is an incredible, lyrical journey through a teenager's struggle with undiagnosed mental health issues and the hereditary or intergenerational effects of trauma. Readers will be moved not only to empathy, but perhaps a real understanding through being enveloped in Biz's mind. They will be forced to confront their preconceptions of what it might mean to be either strong or fragile and what defines mental health, as well as face the idea that being "normal" or "okay" or "fine" is something that all of us have a tenuous hold on at best. And at the end of it all, they just might know... How It Feels to Float...continued
Full Review
(592 words)
(Reviewed by Michelle Anya Anjirbag).
Cath Crowley, author of Words in Deep Blue
Every now and then you pick up a novel and you know you've found something wonderful—a glorious voice, a character you adore. Helena Fox's novel delivers. It is exquisite. Read it. Kathleen Glasgow, author of Girl in Pieces
Profoundly moving ... Will take your breath away. Kerry Kletter, author of The First Time She Drowned
Impossibly beautiful, life-affirming, profound. This is not a book; it is a work of art. Margo Lanagan, author of Tender Morsels
This book will explode you into atoms, put you back together, and return the new shape of you to earth. Alive with sensation and rich in thought and feeling, How it Feels to Float intensively explores what it's like to be here now.
As the narrative of How It Feels to Float unfolds, it becomes apparent that Biz's father suffered from some mental health problems and that there is a connection between how he and Biz process the world. The hereditary effects of trauma are only just becoming understood but, in essence, intergenerational trauma describes the transfer of the traumatic experience from those who experienced it first hand to a second, or even further generations, of offspring by way of complex post-traumatic stress disorder mechanisms.
Though the idea is still being debated in scientific circles, there is a theory that the children of people who have faced traumas have an even greater chance of having stress disorders than the parents who suffered the ...
If you liked How It Feels to Float, try these:
by Mindy McGinnis
Published 2024
From award-winning author Mindy McGinnis comes a mesmerizing YA psychological mystery following a teen girl who is grappling with the death of her brother as she starts a new job in the caverns of Ohio—only to become the number one suspect in her coworker's murder. Perfect for fans of Courtney Summers and Kathleen Glasgow.
by Jeff Garvin
Published 2021
A quirky and heartfelt coming-of-age story about a teen girl with bipolar II who signs her failed magician father up to perform his legendary but failed illusion on live TV in order to make enough money to pay for the medications they need - from the author of Symptoms of Being Human. Perfect for fans of Adi Alsaid, David Arnold, and Arvin Ahmadi.
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