Phoenix: a Memoir

"This powerful memoir immediately establishes itself as the work of a highly talented young writer. In a voice that is strong, unsparing, never judgmental, Mayall traces her years-long journey as a young woman to find escape out of the entrapping mean streets of Los Angeles, a separated world invisible to all but its denizens. She does this with unflinching honesty and authenticity. She knows what it's like to wake up into the harsh sunlight in a Venice Beach parking lot, cramped in an old car with other outcasts. She conveys the urgency for chemical surcease that leads her into dangerous streets, dark alleys; surcease no matter if bought by a sordid paid encounter. A punishing dawn at times finds her still searching for that illusive escape.

Through all this, Mayall is able to find poignancy and humor. She finds it in the drug recovery meetings she haunts in search of vagrant camaraderie. She finds it?and introduces the reader to a cast of memorable fellow exiles--in a rigidly ruled rehabilitation institution.

This is a memorable book--beautifully and even lyrically written. At times it is melancholy, at times hopeful, at times shocking, but it is always moving. At times it is even exuberant with the sense of a life lived determined to survive."

John Rechy, author of CITY OF NIGHT

"?This is a real, a serious, no kidding writer?With this fierce memoir, Phoenix, Philippa Mayall comes roaring into the literary world; her sharp and angry Manchester, England, voice barges into the pale and tidy tea room of L. A. literature like a Harley with Drone power.? Jill Robinson, HUFFINGTON POST

Set in Manchester, UK, Los Angeles, and the center of the narrator?s mind, PHOENIX is a compelling memoir that takes the reader through an odyssey of escape. The writing is as raw as the emotions of the narrator named Flip, and the story as gritty as the northern UK city where she was raised. The book begins with a tragic night when a house fire destroys her life as she knows it. Flip flees the scene, devoured by guilt and drowning in self-loathing. She leaps into a synthetic existence of mind-altering drugs and alcohol, but before long her pain starts to bleed into her psyche once again. Her desperate urge to escape takes her six thousand miles from home to L. A. Flip is distraught to discover her feelings came with her, and she soothes them with even more potent drugs offered to her by a new friend. This becomes the axis of self-destruction and self-discovery. She ends up homeless, living in a car with two other people and two cats, and a new flame is ignited within her. After a violent confrontation with her friends, Flip is forced to enter a drug rehab so she isn't sleeping on the streets. This is the beginning of her real and most courageous escape.