When J.D. Dolan's brother John died at 39 following a horrific industrial accident, the two men hadn't spoken in five years and hadn't been close for more than a decade. This memoir, Dolan's first book, seethes with frustration, resentment, and guilt over their relationship's failure while only circuitously examining why it fell apart. In a series of terse anecdotes, devoid of overt emotion but charged with metaphorical significance, Phoenix: A Brother's Life recalls Dolan's childhood hero-worship of the father-substitute who gave him his first gun and his first motorcycle, and taught him how to use both. To a tagalong kid brother, John represented freedom, fortune, and the future; to the drug-fueled, image-conscious, shallow Hollywood tour manager Dolan became, John evoked contempt and pity. Dolan offers little transition between the two stages, because even he doesn't seem sure how it all happened. His chronologically scattered stories indirectly indict everyone in sight: himself, John, their uncommunicative father, their ghostly mother, their feuding and self-absorbed sisters, their betrayal-prone in-laws. In the face of his family's longstanding refusal to openly admit to or address conflict, Dolan's confusion and awkwardness is understandable, his restraint admirable. He admits to sentiment without becoming maudlin, praises his brother without lionizing him, and exposes his family members to analysis without accusing them. He even admits his own failings without excusing or obsessing over them. It's not clear whether he's trying to clear the air, spread the blame, take a stand against complacency, or just fumble publicly through his pain, but Phoenix is a brave, endearingly human attempt to breach a lifetime barrier of family silence. The book can be frustrating—it's a personal confessional from a writer who isn't quite sure what he's confessing—but it's an expressive elegy that exhibits amateur insight but professional talent.