Customer Reviews

Name All the Animals: A Memoir

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a true story, which is why it's described as a memoir. But it could just as easily have been published as a novel. It has all the character development, suspense, narrative arc, and beautiful writing of the best literary fiction. So don't dismiss it if you're not a big memoir fan. It should appeal to fiction and nonfiction readers equally.
But regardless of how it's categorized, I could NOT put this book down. I read it every second I could and couldn't bear to be away from it when I was at work. The grief made my heart break, but the love story, and Alison's success in figuring out who she is, just made my heart swell. It's such a gorgeous, moving portrait of a family, both in grief and in love. It's told through the 15-year-old eyes of the author, and she just GETS adolescence. I was sent spiralling back to my own memories of high school, and the unique, electric, unforgettable experience of first love. It's one of those unforgettable books that only come along every so often. I highly recommend it to readers everywhere.

First time author Allison Smith has written an engrossing memoir that reads like a coming-of-age novel, as she describes childhood pastimes, family vacations, struggles in school, her first kiss, etc. However, superimposed over all of these activities and events is the shadow of her older brother's sudden death when she was 15 years old. Smith shares her own response to the loss of Roy, a brother with whom she was so close that they shared a common nickname, Alroy. At the same time, Smith skillfully weaves in stories of her family's past, an effective literary tool which serves to illuminate the different reactions of each family member to Roy's death. The narrative does not always relate to Roy directly, but although Smith devotes much of her book to her experiences in school, friendship, and love, the specter of Roy is always present.

Smith has done a masterful job of characterizing the many different emotions which compromise grief; her book is not just about sadness but about anger, confusion, numbness, guilt, embarrassment, and more. The teenaged Allison is a poignant figure who can't help but to ignite compassion, not only in those around her but also in the present-day reader. My one disappointment about this book is that the reader is told little about Allison's future. Although Smith includes an epilogue which takes place 13 years after Roy's death, these final pages add little to Allison's story, leaving the reader to wonder about her health, her relationships, and her life in general. Overall, however, this book is a remarkable acheivement for Smith, who clearly has the makings of a novelist.

Like an earlier reviewer, I too read this book in one sitting. Unlike that reviewer, I found the writing remarkable. Readers will want to keep picking it up, not so much because the book is "gripping", but because it is inviting - you will just want to spend more time with her.

The book is a moving memoir that reads like a novel. Ms. Smith has seamlessly woven together pieces of her story in a manner reminiscent of a new friend describing her family to you over a period of time - memories that may seem disjointed and out of focus at first begin to take shape until, in the end, the reader realizes a relationship has been formed.

Yes, religion is the backbone of this young girl's family but readers are not beaten over the head with it, it simply is. "Hot button" issues are treated with the subtlety of adolesence and thankfully, never labeled. They too are just part of growing up. I don't think this book was ever meant to address how to deal with the painful aftermath of the death of a sibling. Rather it is a tribute to childhood and growing up in spite of it all.

Recommendation? Read it and decide for yourself!

Alison Smith not lost her only brother to a car accident at age 15, she also lost the luxury of working through the typical adolescent struggles on her own time, with her parents' full attention. Denial and a stiff-upper-lip attitude are the strategies her parents choose to get through the long grieving period -- which happens to coincide with her own first steps toward adulthood.
Smith gets her period the day before her brother dies. She meets her first love a few months later, goes to her first boy-girl drinking party, grows apart from her prim-and-proper best friend and tries to walk a narrow line between fitting in at school and letting people know what (and whom) she really cares about.
Her parents, who hold things together with devout religious observance, extreme hiking and clucking nervously (but ineffectually) over their only remaining child, fail to notice (or are afraid to mention) her anorexia, even when she drops to 85 pounds. They have only the haziest, uneasy grasp of the tumultuous romantic relationship she's involved in and don't even mention it when their daughter fails to comb her hair for days and leaves for school with her sweater inside out. Smith's parents work so hard just to remain functional after such an unexpected loss that the family becomes dysfunctional -- failing to protect her even as they indulge in overprotective behavior.
She's a subtle enough writer to portray her ambivalence about some of her convent-school friends -- the theatrical Susanna, who wears opera gloves to school (because they're not covered by the uniform code)is seen as fun to watch but insensitive when she presses Smith to use a slumber-party Ouija board to contact her late brother.
The nuns who run the girls' school also are far from stock characters. As a graduate of another convent school (operated by a different religious order), I was surprised and proud to see someone describing how much the best of these women offered their students -- shrewd, kind, intuitive and in their own way, unconventional, the nuns in this book emerge as individuals, not Sister Stereotype.
Smith's writing is deceptively simple, not calling attention to itself, except in half-buried metaphors -- for instance, an account of the game of "ghost baseball" she and her doomed brother played ends with him stepping off from third base, calling "Ghost man heading home."
Like another reviewer here, I missed knowing more about Smith's life after the main part of the memoir, which ends in the summer after her junior year in high school. I wanted to know how she had become a writer, how she had integrated the loss of the brother into her adult life (does she tell people about him now, outside the context of this book?) and how she came to determine her adult sexual orientation (since her affair with another girl -- handled with extreme delicacy -- is a major part of the book.
Perhaps she is saving those themes for another memoir. I hope so.

I LOVED this book and can't wait until it is my turn to select the book for my book group to read. This will definitely be my choice -- there is so much to discuss in it. It is a book of despair and hope, family, friends and society's expectations, and above all, love and isolation. I found it very much more uplifting than The Lovely Bones, to which it will inevitably be compared.

I am a graduate student and have been in school for the past 20 years, but I am not a big reader. Yes, I read textbooks and all readings required by my professors, but I rarely take the time to sit down and read a book. I saw Name All the Animals at Barnes and Noble the other day and thought I'd read the first few chapters to get a feel for it. All of the books I've purchased over the past few years have ended up half-read because they didn't grab me. This book not only grabbed me but it also opened my eyes. I read it in one day! Do yourself a favor and read this fascinating and well-told life story.

As a childhood friend of the author and classmate in high school, I ran right out to buy her book because I thought it would be interesting to read about the author's childhood and events surrounding her brother's death as I remember it well. Well, not only was it interesting it was OUTSTANDING. I could not put this book down and read it in one day. Even if I had not known the author I would have have to say it was one of the best books I have read in a long time. Anyone who has grown up Catholic, lost a loved one or has children or even a family for that matter will not be able to put his book down without taking time to reflect on relationships, love and spirituality in their lives. It is a book that makes you think and that asks some big questions but leaves you to come up with answers. I would highly reccommend this for book club discussions.
My only regret about readng this book is that it really leaves you wondering - How is the author doing today? Did she get help? How did her life turn out?
I hope that we will have more to read in the future from Alison.
Also - as an aside to a previous reviewer who also attended Mercy High School - I though it was in fact a VERY accurate portrayal of Mercy and the nuns did most certainly make us do push-ups and sit-ups there if we got in trouble- I did them!

"Name all the Animals" has a pulse, a heartbeat - a quickening despite the realistically gritty and tragic tale of never-healed loss of a son and brother. Alison Smith courageously puts her story out there in a clean, concise and often connecting manner that simply says, "Here is what happened." - and we, the readers, get to witness the unfolding right before our eyes, our hearts and our spirit.

We read of the three years between the time of young Roy's death and when Alison reaches the age Roy was when he died - and then lives beyond him... something that we can intuitively understand is among the most difficult aspects of being a surviving sibling for her to face.

Alison became "The One Whose Brother Died". Her community supported her and yet, allowed her to starve herself and not sleep and withdraw. I loved the section where her mother discovered the work of Kubler-Ross and attempted to get Alison and her very religious, ritualistic husband to share their feelings about Roy's death and their survival - but neither would budge.

There isn't a trace of judgment in the tone of this book - it is vibrantly fresh and true.

One note of interest: I was grateful I started the book in the back - in the Interview with the Author. It gave insight into Alison and made me smile in recognition.... It was like I was rooting for her and for this book and for myself... if she can do it, I can (and YOU can), too.

Alison Smith's memoir, Name All the Animals, is wonderful. It is not often that a writer can depict so much beauty through their words that you feel as if you are experiencing what they are going through. Smith is able to use the subject of her life at a particularly painful time and transport the reader through her imagery to feel her and her parents pain, confusion, struggle and resolution as a result of her brother's death. The memoir begins with the fifteen year old Smith, discovering her 18 year old brother Roy has just died in a car accident. Everything is conveyed in such a clear, honest sense that you can easily imagine yourself in the families place, walking around on automatic just trying to grasp the enormity of the situation. Every member of the family deals with Roy's death in a different way, but all are clearly devastated. In this sense, the novel recounts without judgement how her parents focused on dealing with their son's death and as a result went to some extreme measures to protect her from the entire story and at the same time ignored alot of her signals for help. This in no way diminishes her admiration or devotion to her parents and her descriptons of their childhoods and courtship is particularly touching. On top of everything is the additional burden of going through adolescence during this traumatic time and we read about the measures Alison takes to keep Roy's memory alive. Much of the poignancy in this novel centers on Smith's relationships in highschool with her first crush, friends and the nuns at the Catholic School. As she approaches the end of her teenage years, her adulthood is marked with the acceptance of her brother's death and her decision to live and move on with her life. It is just a wonderfully written and touching story and I hope to see more work by Alison Smith.

Name all the Animals will likely draw comparisons to The Lovely Bones--as it should--but Name is grounded in reality, which makes it all the more effective. Smith is a wonderful, lyrical writer, but also an incredibly accessible one. She doesn't use huge words or odd symbols to communicate her grief--she just emotes pain as any teenage girl would.

You will not be able to put down this book. It's heartbreaking, very funny, very touching, and it has the power to change you.