How It Feels to Float

Starred review from April 8, 2019
Set in Wollongong, Australia, Fox’s exquisite debut offers an intimate portrayal of a teenager navigating familial and social complexities while living with an undiagnosed mental illness. Biz, 17, blames herself for her father’s death when she was seven (“I am why he was sad”), and she doesn’t tell anyone that he remains a visible, often comforting presence in her life. Biz has her posse of friends, including her best friend Grace, whom she once kissed, and who supports Biz as she begins to explore her sexual identity. But a drunken beach party incident leads to her dramatic expulsion from the group and catapults her into suicidal depression. Biz drops out of school, begins clinical treatment, and makes unexpected new friends, including Jasper, a teen with challenges of his own. However, her ongoing hallucinations, panic attacks, and disassociations, in which she has no memory of incidents others report, leave her increasingly
perplexed about her experiences, until she reaches a crisis point. Through lyrical first-person narration, Fox empathically conveys the hereditary nature of Biz’s illness, its disorienting manifestations, and the limitations and power of love to heal. Ages 14–up. Agent: Catherine Drayton, InkWell Management.

May 1, 2019

Gr 9 Up-Biz's father died when she was young, and her grief hasn't let up, but he visits her to tell stories about the past, so he isn't really gone. Other things talk to her, too, such as the ocean, which she wades into while drunk and nearly drowns before the new kid, Jasper, pulls her out. After a few bad turns, she loses the group of friends she exists on the fringes of, including her best friend, and drops out of school. But then she loses her dad-again-and it's too much. She sets out on the road to find him, Jasper by her side, taking photographs of places that were important to her dad, who speaks to her through them. Through much of the story, it feels as though her father might be appearing and nonsentient objects may be talking through magical realism rather than hallucination, but as she pulls further from reality and ends up in the hospital, her dissociation becomes obvious. The lack of clarity between what's real and what isn't might be confusing, but it captures the experience of not being able to tell the difference. The grief, depression, and intrusive thoughts Biz endures are raw, but there is a healthy distance between her experience of events and readers'. This portrayal of mental illness is honest and authentic, including Biz's recovery. VERDICT For collections that need to expand their mental health offerings.-Alex Graves, Manchester City Library, NH

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2019
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Biz shouldn't be able to talk to her dad?he died when she was still a small child?but when he comes to sit on the end of her bed, Biz is comforted by the stories he tells of their time together. At first this seems like the only disquieting thing about Biz's relationship with reality. She has friends, she does well in school, her family loves her. But after a mixed-up sexual encounter on the beach one night, Biz finds herself standing in the waves, floating out of her body. This is not the first or last time she has disconnected in this way, but this is the time that jolts her life off course. Biz is rejected by her friends, drops out of school, and can barely get out of bed. When at last she finds a purposeful mission?to travel to her father's childhood home?it's strange and riddled with hallucinations. Biz is smart, funny, and self-deprecating, qualities that allow the reader to trust her even as we realize how her mind is disintegrating. It's a masterful portrayal of mental illness that illuminates the complex interplay between emotional trauma and the mind's subsequent recoil. And the writing is just beautiful. Recommend to fans of Deb Caletti's A Heart in a Body in the World (2018).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2019
Aussie teen Biz sees and speaks to her dead father and often feels detached from her own body. On a soul-searching journey to her father's outback childhood home, she suffers a terrifying break with reality; family, friends, and mental-health workers help Biz explore her father's death, understand her anxiety and depression, and realize her sexual identity. Fox's debut is a sensitively wrought character study expressed in distinctive, intimate prose.

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2019
Aussie teen Biz sees and speaks to her dead father, hears voices coming from photographs, and often feels detached from her own body. I leave my body and turn molecular. In this state, sometimes thoughts of suicide creep in: If you are already the universe, why not just become it?If we are a blip between non-existences, why bother staying? Biz struggles to ignore the thoughts, but when a series of alcohol-fueled social gaffes blows up her already tenuous friendship group, she retreats even further inside herself. In a misguided attempt to find peace, she takes a soul-searching journey to her father's Outback childhood home, where she suffers a terrifying break with reality. It takes the combined efforts of family, friends, and mental-health workers to help Biz explore the painful circumstances of her father's death, understand the symptoms of her anxiety and depression, and realize her sexual identity. Fox's debut is a sensitively wrought character study expressed in distinctive, intimate prose. Biz can feel cancer pooling in my freckles under the intense Australian sun; and decides, I am the rain. I will be the rain. I will be dead and I will be ash and I will be thrown into water and taken by the sky while in a dissociated state. An author's note discloses Fox's own experiences with mental illness and sexual identity. jennifer hubert swan

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

Starred review from March 15, 2019
An Australian teenager struggles to cope with grief and mental illness in this captivating debut. Seventeen-year-old Biz constantly sees her father even though he died nearly 10 years ago. He pops up to remind her of events from her childhood, to speak with her when she's spiraling, to puzzle out their shared history of mental illness. She doesn't tell anyone else: not her single mother, not her best friend, Grace (with whom she shared a kiss), not the new boy, Jasper, who walks with a limp, or his grandmother, who has taken Biz under her wing. After an incident further triggers her undiagnosed (or, at least, unnamed) PTSD, Biz begins to unravel, dropping out of school before both literally and metaphorically journeying to better understand her father. Biz's mental health crisis, which primarily takes the form of hallucinations, dissociation, and panic attacks, is portrayed with raw, vivid authenticity. Biz and the majority of the cast default to white (Grace is implied biracial Chinese/white), and while their sexual identities are questioned, they never become the central focus of the story. Characters sometimes feel flat or underdeveloped, but this is fitting for Biz's first-person perspective, which is unreliable and frequently foggy. Fox's prose is lyrical and profoundly affecting, providing a nuanced account of the hereditary effects of trauma.Haunting. (resources) (Fiction. 14-18)

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April 4, 2019
How do you find the will to live when you can’t even feel the ground anymore? Elizabeth Martin Grey—Biz—doesn’t know. All she knows is that she’s got one foot in reality and the other in a place where her dad is still alive to talk to her. When Biz finds herself cast out by her peers, abandoned by her best friend, and no longer welcome at her school, it becomes harder and harder to know what’s real and what isn’t—and to find the will to keep going. This is a perfect, surreal exploration of mental illness and grief. Fox’s writing is poetry, bringing the reader to the brink of Biz’s madness and back again as she finds new ways to make meaning, and new people to make it with. As she searches for answers and connection, Biz’s relationships with her mother, her new friend Jasper, and her elderly friend Sylvia help her to find the ground again. How it Feels to Float is a visceral reading experience that captures the way in which many teens struggle with mental illness. It is a lesson in acceptance and understanding, and readers will be deeply moved.

Bec Kavanagh is a Melbourne-based writer, reviewer and academic