Rating: 
Summary: sad, profound, smart
Review: A great book that is equal parts clarity and sadness. This is a profound and touching book that delves one family's tragedy and the odd geometries of family bonds and patterns to discover some truths about the way we live, the way we deal with death and the ways families work, don't work, and unravel.
Rating:
Summary: Phoenix rising from the flames
Review: Deceptively simple in manner and topic, this little tome - a memoir about the vagaries of familial love and reflections on the disappointments of the expectations of youth - holds more food for thought than many a treatise on contemporary philosophy. How much of this book is reportage and how much is embellished fiction is realy not an issue: the detailed description of a nouveau California transplant family in all its dysfuntional state recalls tales of immigrants, bits of Steinbeck, and chards of Camus, Wolfe, and other writers of the human condition. Yes, this is a painful tale of the loss of a brother to the burn injuries from an industrial accident. Yes, the coming to grips with death from the various vantages of family members, coworkers, doctors, etc is a line of penetrating thought. But this book is about so much more than these tales. "Phoenix: A Brother's Life" forces us to accept that we are too often a race of beings that fails to communicate, has lost the spirit of Family, has too little time for the work Love requires. And if ever we needed a wakeup call for embracing these losses it is surely now. Though the title defines the place where all of this finds its Golgotha - Phoenix, Arizona is the location of the hospital housing the Burn Unit that becomes the final destination for the slowly but inevitably dying brother - I think that by the end of this book the author subtly shares that this gruesome experience is akin to the mythological bird that rises from the flames to new life and discovery. Bravo, J.D. Dolan. And thank you from those readers wise enough to embrace this book.
Rating:
Summary: Achingly Beautiful
Review: I found this memoir to be superior in portraying one of life's most difficult relationships--siblings and their love for one another. I will make sure that all of my 5 sons read this touching memoir.
Rating:
Summary: "Achingly Beautiful"
Review: It has been a long time since I have read a memoir that sodeeply touched me. Relationships among SIBLINGS is a tender subject.Only recently did I realize that I cannot order or organize my children's feelings towards each other...no matter how hard I try! Dolan tells in a heartfelt way what happens in families...how different siblings react, how difficult it is to maintain a loving relationship just because you are blood relatives. This is a sparse, beautiful account of a family...much like many, if truth be known. What I mean is,-not perfect.
Rating:
Summary: A SPARE MEMOIR OF INCANDESCENT BEAUTY
Review: J. D. or Jay Dolan has given us a rare gift - a spare memoir of such incandescent beauty and truth that it brings forth nods of affirmation. It is a story of love lost and reclaimed, a reminder of the sure knowledge that is sometimes kept locked within a human heart, and the saga of a family shattered by silence. An unpretentious, astute writer, Dolan is forthright in revealing his own rugged emotional terrain, as well as his days of womanizing and drug abuse. He is equally candid in describing flawed familial relationships, yet there is always a note of grace. ...The beauty of Mr. Dolan's book lies not so much in the recounting of a life, although his narrative skills are considerable, but in the redemption found and the love rediscovered. In his hands there is triumph amidst grief and hope derived from sorrow. Phoenix is an extraordinary debut by one who is already master of his craft.
Rating:
Summary: A SPARE MEMOIR OF INCANDESCENT BEAUTY
Review: J. D. or Jay Dolan has given us a rare gift - a spare memoir of such incandescent beauty and truth that it brings forth nods of affirmation. It is a story of love lost and reclaimed, a reminder of the sure knowledge that is sometimes kept locked within a human heart, and the saga of a family shattered by silence. An unpretentious, astute writer, Dolan is forthright in revealing his own rugged emotional terrain, as well as his days of womanizing and drug abuse. He is equally candid in describing flawed familial relationships, yet there is always a note of grace. ...The beauty of Mr. Dolan's book lies not so much in the recounting of a life, although his narrative skills are considerable, but in the redemption found and the love rediscovered. In his hands there is triumph amidst grief and hope derived from sorrow. Phoenix is an extraordinary debut by one who is already master of his craft.
Rating:
Summary: Phoenix
Review: Maybe it's because I'm living in Phoenix that I felt so close to this story, that I felt the heat. But then again maybe not. Resonating from his current focus, be it Vuarnet sunglasses or a pretty nurse tending to his brother, we discover what's happened in these lives, how this family came to such a state. For Dolan, he was a weed fiend. He was the road manager for Cher. He was the background in the portrait of a famous desert motorcycle racer. With the glut of memoir in the publishing market these days, this is one that deserved to be written and has to be read.
Rating: 
Summary: An evocative family memoir
Review: Phoenix: A Brother's Life, by J.D. Dolan, is an autobiographical account of the author's relationship with his family, primarily with his older brother who died of severe burns suffered during a devastating workplace explosion. The book spans the abbreviated life of John Dolan, the author J.D. "Jay" Dolan's older brother, and muses primarily on their relationship in a series of flashbacks and reflections that take place during Jay's death vigil over his mortally-wounded brother. The narrative sets forth the dynamics of the Dolan family, consisting of the parents, the sons John and Jay, and their three sisters, whose characters are slightly less fleshed out and who are more like satellites orbiting the more assertive brothers. The family persona is summarized quickly: the mother is a typical, nondescript housewife; the father looms as a sullen, bitter disciplinarian who passes on to his children the habit of holding longstanding, silent grudges; the oldest sister is defiantly independent while the other two sisters stay closer to home and exchange sibling rivalries; the older brother John is a stoic automotive enthusiast who gets drafted for duty in Vietnam; and Jay is the youngest child born after his parents were in their forties, the forgotten child observing the family drama and being raised more by his siblings than his parents. The story focuses on Jay's hero worship of John and contains many a male bonding vignette, including forays into the woods where John teaches Jay to target shoot, as well as their shared love of cars and motorcycles and the ceremonial passing of the torch (in the form of a Marine Corps sweatshirt) when John is drafted and goes off to war in Vietnam (he actually gets sent to Japan). Despite their adolescent closeness, in later years John severs all communication with Jay for reasons we never really discover, which incidentally is one of the only unsatisfying aspects of the story. The brothers and the rest of the family are reunited by tragedy, when John is injured in a steam heat explosion at the Southern California Edison's Mohave Generating Station in which sixteen people were injured, six of whom died. John's abrupt decision to terminate his relationship with Jay mirrors their father's habit of doing likewise. Their father enforces the petty grudges he holds by refusing to speak to people who draw his ire, including his oldest daughter because she bought an impractical, flash car (a Thunderbird) and later stayed out past curfew on a single occasion, and also his own brother for undisclosed reasons that lasted until the brother was on his deathbed. The repetition by John of this corrosive, emotionally-constipated withholding of communication and love from Jay is what makes this story so poignant, as Jay struggles to reconcile the unresolved feud while bidding a final farewell to his brother. Although it is nonfiction, the story reads like a novel, weaving past and present narratives adeptly. The writing is thoroughly masculine and spare, in the style of Hemingway, without being obviously imitative or jarring. Overall, the story is engaging albeit a little depressing because it does not deliver the catharsis the reader -- and no doubt Jay -- hopes for. No clear answers or endings are delivered, but then perhaps that is what separates fact from fiction, and J.D. Dolan succeeds in conveying a message about the importance of family bonds and the unconditional love that underlie them.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderfully compelling and heartbreaking memoir.
Review: This is, by far, one of the best memoirs I've read in years--a brutally honest exploration of family dysfunction coupled with the heartbreakingly tragic death of a big brother. Phoenix is a gripping, absorbing, and illuminating read. It's a book you'll read and re-read for years.
Rating:
Summary: METHINKS LARGE FAMILIES LIVE ON THE EDGE
Review: This memoir is a salute to an older brother and points out the wide range of differences of individuals in large families and at the same time similiarities as well. J.D. Dolan decided he wanted to be a writer and he is a good one. His background as stated in the book has no gleaning to that of a "writing life," but also offers the realization that you can become what you want to be if you will only work at it and on it.
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