`PHOENIX RISING or How to Survive Your Life` by Cynthia D. Grant

Phoenix Rising-or how to survive your life by Cynthia D . Grant

Book Report The Young adult novel Phoenix Rising : or how to survive your life by Cynthia D . Grant is a candid sensitive story about the serious effects of seventeen-year-old Helen Castle 's death from cancer on her family . The story is told through the eyes of Jessie who has been traumatized by her older sister 's death . Jessie and the other members of her family begin a healing process , while Helen , whose world we see through Jessie comes to terms

with a life that seems capricious and unjust to Jessie . She feels pain , anger , loneliness , confusion and withdrawal throughout the novel . The family is shattered . Its new dynamics are realistically revealed with the already strained relationship between Lucas , and the father that become explosive . Jessie reads on in the journal to learn Helen 's feelings as her cancer progresses , which ranges from morbid despair to soaring hope that is made more poignant to the readers reading along with her

The setting of the story is white , comfortably middle-class California suburbia . The characters in Phoenix Rising are of average intelligence and are raised above being stereotypical characters by the pain , reflection , and eventual growth of Helen 's death forces upon them They remain true to their backgrounds and natures throughout their trials and adjustments . It is the mark of Cynthia D . Grant 's talent that the reader never doubts they are reading this novel through believable teenage eyes

The central character of the novel is Jessie , and the one who is most dangerously affected by the older sister 's death . Jessie 's tendency is not only to idealize her sister making her feel worthless , and unattractive but she also feels that she has failed to reach Helen and talk to her about her illness making Jessie shut herself off from her father , mother , her friend Bambi , Helen 's boyfriend Bloomfield , and their next-door neighbor little Sara Rose . Jessie not only stops eating toward the end of the novel , she also shuts herself off more ultimately refusing to leave her room . Jessie 's brother Lucas is the kind family philosopher . On the surface , however he plays a role of a rebellious youth whose love for loud rock music . He is an exceptionally good electric and acoustic guitarist and this puts him at odds with his father , whom he engages in arguments at the slightest opportunity Jessie 's hard-working architect father seems fixated on his role as a family provider and Lucas as the antagonist . Jessie tells the reader My father thinks he won 't cry as long as he keeps screaming ' It is as if the father and the other members have been so traumatized by the Helen 's death that a kind of static role-playing is easier for them than facing their world and moving on with their lives . Jessie 's mother seems simply to have been bludgeoned into being a relatively passive person who can do little more than...