- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Scribner (31 Mar 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743252330
- ISBN-13: 978-0743252331
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 13.7 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,063,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
This is a therapy book, for first-time author Alison Smith, but more importantly for anyone who has ever grieved. But that’s only half of it. This is a book that offers so much more--from its elegant, dignified prose to its mature insights into sibling loss, adolescence, forbidden love and family relationships.
Largely set in the two and a half years after 15-year-old Alison loses her cherished brother Roy in an horrific car crash--the truth of which is kept from her by a protective community--it charts the grieving process of a family rent asunder by a loss so sudden and brutal it knocks them into a strange, half-way dimension somewhere between the dead and the living.
While Alison¹s deeply religious father and fiercely capable mother find their own ways of dealing with the death of their beloved 18-year-old boy--just weeks before he is due to leave for college--their only remaining child is left to navigate her own way through a maze of emotions, all the while growing from a serious, intelligent teenager into a woman.
Alison¹s increasingly erratic sleeping, eating and mourning rituals, combined with an intense love affair with a fellow pupil at her Catholic high school, send her dangerously close to the edge of life.
Throughout, her writing is compelling in its honesty. Her descriptions of the long nights following the accident, when her family roam the empty rooms of their home searching--but never quite finding--the comfort of sleep, are heart-wrenching, but eloquently told. There’s no mushy sentiment, no lecturing, no point-scoring, no judging. Alison avoids cliches, allowing the reader to experience her pain with no feeling of voyeurism.
After the accident, Alison becomes known in her neighbourhood as "the girl who lost her brother". Thanks to
Review
Advance praise for NAME ALL THE ANIMALS: 'NAME ALL THE ANIMALS is an extraordinarily moving and intense book. The writing is effortless. The story deeply touching. From page one I was gripped in the same way that one might be gripped by a novel' JONATHAN SELF 'The compelling arcana of Roman Catholicism, the awkwardness of adolescence, the strange world after the death of a loved one... Within the frame of American suburbia, Alison Smith has painted a picture that against the odds does justice to all three. Poignant, bizarre, resonant and uplifting' GLEN DUNCAN
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
"Name All the Animals" won't be to everyone's taste, but I found this memoir to be both moving and meaningful. It is worth pointing out that the book is as much about the author's coming to terms with her lesbianism as it is about the tragic loss of her brother to an horrific car crash when she is only a young teenager and her brother barely an adult; those who are more interested in reading about moving on from grief and less about a young woman realising she likes other women, might therefore find this is not the book for them.
This book struck a chord with me and a number of years after reading it, certain details and passages of "Name All the Animals" have stayed with me. So too has the quality of Smith's writing. It is fluid and lyrical and yet by turns also raw and visceral too, as Smith shows the devastation wrought on her family by the loss they have suffered, and the painful reality that she must make her own way in the world and be true to herself, even though finding the strength to do this might mean hurting her grieving parents even further.
All-in-all, I found this to be a powerful and haunting story of heartbreaking loss and difficult self-realisation.
This book struck a chord with me and a number of years after reading it, certain details and passages of "Name All the Animals" have stayed with me. So too has the quality of Smith's writing. It is fluid and lyrical and yet by turns also raw and visceral too, as Smith shows the devastation wrought on her family by the loss they have suffered, and the painful reality that she must make her own way in the world and be true to herself, even though finding the strength to do this might mean hurting her grieving parents even further.
All-in-all, I found this to be a powerful and haunting story of heartbreaking loss and difficult self-realisation.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I found this novel a little mundane at times, and it wasn't a book I felt compelled to keep picking up. However I did feel that the author captured the closeness of a brother and sister very well and I enjoyed the descriptions of their growing up, building forts and secret places.
Smith descibes Roy in the typical way that a bereaved person remembers fondly a lost loved one. Happy moments and memories that make us smile.
She also touches on the different way people cope (or don't!) and the different emotions we experience, from the bewildering early days of grief right through to resignation and acceptance.
Alison, who is 15 when her brother dies has been brought up in a very religious family and feels God leaves along with her brother on the day he dies. This was dealt with well in general, but I have to confess to understanding anyone wanting to escape the stiffling Catholicism shown by her parents and the nuns at school...yet sadly without any of them really understanding what she was going through.
Her struggle with this did however result in the poignant ending.
Smith descibes Roy in the typical way that a bereaved person remembers fondly a lost loved one. Happy moments and memories that make us smile.
She also touches on the different way people cope (or don't!) and the different emotions we experience, from the bewildering early days of grief right through to resignation and acceptance.
Alison, who is 15 when her brother dies has been brought up in a very religious family and feels God leaves along with her brother on the day he dies. This was dealt with well in general, but I have to confess to understanding anyone wanting to escape the stiffling Catholicism shown by her parents and the nuns at school...yet sadly without any of them really understanding what she was going through.
Her struggle with this did however result in the poignant ending.
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