45 pages • 1 hour read
How It Feels To Float
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Character Analysis
Elizabeth “Biz” Martin Grey
Biz, 16, struggles with two traumatic realities: her father’s death by suicide when she was seven and her growing realizations about her sexual identity. To cope with this internal struggle, Biz imagines that she is floating above herself and the chaotic world around her. She has animated conversations with the ocean, with the photographs that she takes as part of a night photography class. Her only comfort comes from the visits from her father’s ghost, who shares stories of Biz’s childhood and calms her in difficult situations.
Biz is suspended from school after she and her friend Grace throw a rock through the window of a classmate’s home; the boy called Grace a “slut” for having sex, and Biz had falsely accused of sleeping with a classmate who sexually assaulted her. Biz usually covers up her emotions, but this leads to an emotional and psychological breakdown, and she realizes she needs to stop pretending she is fine. With the help and emotional support of her friends—Jasper and his grandmother Sylvia—her mother, and a helpful psychiatrist, Biz comes to terms with her family’s history of depression, anxiety, and suicide. Her friendships with Jasper and Sylvia show her that she can be vulnerable with people who do not judge her and that others live while dealing with grief and loss. By the end of the novel, Biz is ready to “see what might happen next” (370) and engage with rather than float above the harsh but beautiful world.
Jasper Alessio
Jasper Alessio is a new student in school whom Biz befriends before she is suspended. He is also Sylvia’s grandson, which Biz learns after she and Sylvia become friends. Jasper walks with a limp as a result of a near-fatal car accident when he was 11. He has longish hair and rides a motorcycle; Biz’s Posse finds him creepy, but Biz finds him intriguing. She and Jasper develop a mutually supportive relationship, and he accompanies her on her quest to find information about her father’s past. Jasper is gay, and this helps Biz accept her own feelings and identity. A key moment in their relationship is when Jasper saves Biz as she is wading into the ocean, possibly to drown herself. Jasper is a foil for Biz because his differences make him illegible to many of his school peers, in the same way that Biz finds herself on the fringes of her social group. However, unlike Biz, Jasper accepts himself for who he is and has a supportive family member in Sylvia who validates him rather than trying to change him. He also offers Biz a model for courage and recovery, with his own recovery and rehab from his accident.
Sylvia
Biz meets the 80-something Sylvia in their Friday night photography class. Right away, Biz notices Sylvia’s spirit, energy, and curiosity about the class. Biz thinks she acts “[l]ike she’s still young and surprised to find herself inside an old lady’s body” (122). As the two become friends, Biz learns that Sylvia has not had an easy life—her beloved husband passed away, and despite a huge extended family, she lives alone.
For Biz, Sylvia is a mentor figure and a calming presence. The first night they meet, Sylvia notes that Biz seems like she is “going to cry…run out of the classroom weeping” (123). Sylvia reaches over and lightly puts her hand on Biz’s, and Biz has a moment of feeling, strikingly at odds from the numbness she experiences most of the time: “Somehow the world stops spinning. I look at Sylvia. I focus on the feeling of her fingers on mine” (123). Sylvia also emerges as Biz’s surrogate grandmother. Biz finds comfort and security sharing tea and cookies with her, and Sylvia intuitively grasps that Biz is in need of love uncomplicated by judgment or expectations.
Finally, Sylvia is a symbolic character who represents the antithesis of Sylvia Plath, a writer with whom Biz identifies. Plath died by suicide, and Sylvia (Biz’s friend) offers Biz another model for living with grief and mental health concerns while still getting the most out of life.
Stephen Grey
Stephen is Biz’s father who appears to her as a ghost throughout much of the novel. He passed away by drowning when she was seven, and it is very likely that his death was a suicide. Biz saw his dead body, and this is a deep source of trauma for her. When Biz visits her father’s boyhood home in Temora, one of her uncles tells her: “He got twisted in his head like his dad, couldn’t handle farm work, poor precious” (307). Stephen’s father also died by drowning, and his death was also likely a suicide.
Stephen loved surfing but struggled to find regular employment. Biz’s mother shares with her that her father was in perpetual motion during their marriage, trying to find where he would fit in, making to-do lists and pots of coffee: “He had so many plans” (39). He worked variously as a carpenter, a gardener, a fishing boat mate, a youth worker, an office assistant, even a teacher’s assistant despite never finishing college. In the end, the pressures of being a husband and father overwhelmed him.
Biz learns to let go of her father’s ghost by not dwelling in the past. He was a protector when she was young, and she has vivid memories of him saving her from an encounter with a pedophile and plunging her in a cold bath to bring down a dangerously high fever. His ghost is a comforting presence, but over the course of the novel, Biz learns to be comforted and protected by the family and friends around her and remembers her father as a loving presence who will never leave her—but who will also not interfere with her life.
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