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Name All the Animals: A Memoir

3.63 of 5 stars 3.63 · rating details · 1,912 ratings · 203 reviews

An intensely stirring coming-of-age memoir by Alison Smith, All the Animals brilliantly explores the power and limitations of a family's faith. Smith was 15 when her older brother, Roy, was killed in a car accident, and her memoir follows her family as they attempt to put their lives back together. Her parents try to take comfort in their strong Catholic faith but are non...more

Paperback, 352 pages

Published February 22nd 2005 by Scribner (first published January 1st 2004)

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Mar 28, 2007 Tracy Rhodes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Alison Smith examines the fallout in the lives of her and her parents following the sudden death of her adored older brother Roy when she was 15. A sweet and sad book, although not without its funny moments (most involving the feisty nuns in charge of her Catholic girls' high school).

Anyone from a family that has trouble reaching out to each other will be touched by the insular, lonely ways that Alison and her parents suffer from Roy's loss. Alison's slide into anorexia (weirdly overlooked by h...more

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Oct 24, 2007 Amy rated it 2 of 5 stars

man, i'm getting really tired of reading books that are just okay. somebody do me a favor and recommend an awesome book to me, please.
yeah, i'm a little biased against nonfiction, and that may have something to do with it, but this chick is just not a very good writer. she uses the same descriptive phrases over and over, which is really sloppy, and the book is poorly structured. that said, i did sympathize with her. if there was a half-star option i probably would've given this book two and a h...more

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Sep 12, 2012 Saipriya rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: shelf

Alison Smith has written a memoir from an important but rarely talked about point of view. When someone dies young, our society tends empathize to with the parents, but the sibling role is just as significant. Alison bravely tells the story of her brother Roy's tragic death and the repercussions that follow his passing.

Alison not only has to try to overcome her immense grief, but she also has to deal with the fact that the roles in the family almost reverse. Her parents are just as distraught as...more Alison Smith has written a memoir from an important but rarely talked about point of view. When someone dies young, our society tends empathize to with the parents, but the sibling role is just as significant. Alison bravely tells the story of her brother Roy's tragic death and the repercussions that follow his passing.

Alison not only has to try to overcome her immense grief, but she also has to deal with the fact that the roles in the family almost reverse. Her parents are just as distraught as Alison. They seek her out for comfort, instead of the other way around. Her parents say that Alison is the only thing they have left after Roy’s death, and they make an extra effort to make sure Alison won’t be taken away from them, like her brother. However, this makes Alison become even more detached from her friends, as people start to view her as just the girl whose brother died.

One of my favorite parts of the memoir was when Alison was doing a debate in one of her classes at Mercy and was put on the side in favor of gay and lesbian rights. One by one all of the other girls on Alison's side switched to the other side because they didn't think they could win, while Alison remained on her side despite what others would think of her. When one of her classmates asked her if she was only staying on her side so that she could get a good grade, Alison replied, "No. I believe every word of it." That particular moment was just so powerful to me and it made me root for Alison even more. I felt like it was the first time she was passionate about something since Roy had died and she had regained her spirit.

Alison tells her story honestly and from a non-judgmental point of view. Although at first it may seem like a grievous, dismal story, it is truly a story about hope, overcoming obstacles, and embracing who you really are. This memoir wasn’t just a required summer reading book to me; it was a relatable and powerful story that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
(less)

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Feb 15, 2012 Richard Gilbert rated it 5 of 5 stars

In 1984, a small, happy family lives in Rochester, New York: a resolute, devout mother; a dreamy, spiritual father; a quiet, competent boy; a watchful, bookish girl.

But they’re on the brink of disaster, and, almost immediately, it happens: one day in late July the boy, eighteen, dies in a fiery automobile crash. Nothing will ever be the same. They become secretive, walled off their separate grieving, as the accident’s aftershocks go on and on. Alison Smith, who was fifteen when her brother Roy d...more In 1984, a small, happy family lives in Rochester, New York: a resolute, devout mother; a dreamy, spiritual father; a quiet, competent boy; a watchful, bookish girl.

But they’re on the brink of disaster, and, almost immediately, it happens: one day in late July the boy, eighteen, dies in a fiery automobile crash. Nothing will ever be the same. They become secretive, walled off their separate grieving, as the accident’s aftershocks go on and on. Alison Smith, who was fifteen when her brother Roy died, writes hushed, gorgeous prose (few contractions lend solemnity), and shows the survivors staggering forward under heartbreaking loss.

“We had lost the thread of our own story,” she writes.

Alison can only rejoice in the “Before People,” her term for anyone who doesn’t yet know of Roy’s death: inside their heads, he’s still alive. Her relentlessly positive-thinking mother, having insisted a month after Roy’s death on making the family’s annual trek to Cape Cod, throws herself into the ocean just like she and her son used to. She orders onion rings, his favorite beach snack, and eats them grimly. Her stunned father plods like a zombie into the surf, still wearing his slacks and socks.

Smith says neither side of her family “was good at much,” these people who held modest jobs, went bankrupt, or died early, but faith had been their talent:

"My brother and I grew up in the shadow of this faith, in the great floodplain of belief. Christ was more real to me than the children I met at school. As I was walking to the school bus or down the path through the gully at the end of our street, Christ would appear to me, his long robes flowing, his white and bruised hands held out. He was my comforter, my most intimate friend. I knew only Catholics in those early days. And our only differences were Catholic differences: the Sisters of Saint Joseph as opposed to the Sisters of Mercy. Pope John Paul the First or Pope John Paul the Second. In these surroundings you’d be hard-pressed not to believe in the existence of God. It would be like saying you did not believe in oatmeal, or motorcars, or the laws of gravity. . . .

Hell was a real place for us, as real as the next neighborhood. In our insular Catholic world, hell practically had its own zip code. Every year in school we had to write an essay about what hell was like, how it looked, the people who ended up there, what it would be like to spend eternity in that fiery pit."

For Alison, Jesus vanished the day her brother died; a period began that, if not hell, resembled limbo. Name All the Animals shows the dazed girl drift from age fifteen to eighteen as she struggles with overwhelming loss, isolated from her burdened, distracted parents—they are at once overprotective and oblivious toward her. There isn’t much authorial distance: narrated by a bereft girl, with scant mature perspective, the story has a poignant immediacy. Smith’s fifty-five short to middling-length chapters move the book like a freight train, largely because each ends with a hook. Scenes cross from one chapter into another, or a chapter opens by musing upon a character we’ve just seen in action before entering another compelling scene. Smith makes this seamless narrative look easy, and always keeps the timeline clear, but she has said that writing the book took her six years.

Gradually Name All the Animals (the title is a biblical allusion) brings into painful focus how Alison’s loss has colonized her life. It is also a portrait of her parents; her Catholic girls’ school; her quirky classmate friends; various nuns and lay teachers, mostly sympathetic figures who in many cases provide comic relief. We’re privy to her growing rebellion and to her disordered emotions. Alison’s quiet but deepening self-destructiveness and her forbidden sexuality (which leaps from sweet attraction to passion to scandal and turmoil) within a chaste, deeply conservative culture provoke linked crises that make this book impossible to put down.

Name All the Animals is a book to savor, for although it’s driven by a strong unfolding narrative, Smith pauses within it. She lingers on a facial expression, the weather, the feel of an ordinary school day, her neighborhood at night. And so the book breathes, deeply felt, and achieves a rare resonance.(less)

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Oct 04, 2011 Sasha Martinez added it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-read-in-2010

This memoir has been on my TBR LandMass for about three years, ever since I bought it on a whim while I was hanging out at the bookstore one slow afternoon (I probably felt like I had to justify the space I took up there). And, well, it took me this long to read it, and thank goodness it was worth the wait–then again, I hadn’t waited, as much as I procrastinated.

In some editions, the book’s subtitle is A Memoir of the Child Left Behind–and that’s what Alison Smith was. When she was fifteen, the...more

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Aug 01, 2011 Dinah rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: americana, memoir, nonfiction

There's something to be said for matching form and content: Alison Smith's memoir puts the reader in the slow, foggy haze she describes in the months and years following her brother's death. That being said, it doesn't make for a super-engaging read. The form/content match holds up when the narrative moves on to the author's first experience with love in high school; the pace picks up, the text becomes vivid and seems to almost pitter-patter, drawing the reader in to the perilous world of secret...more

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Mar 28, 2011 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

As children, siblings Alison and Roy Smith were so close that their mother called them by one name: Alroy. But on a cool summer morning when Alison was fifteen, she woke to learn that Roy, eighteen, was dead. This is Smith's extraordinary account of the impact of that loss -- on herself, on her parents, and on a deeply religious community.

At home, Alison and her parents sleepwalk in shifts. Alison hoards food for her lost brother, hides in the backyard fort they built together, and waits for him...more

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Jan 20, 2011 Kristen Chavis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Name All the Animals is an example of what a memoir should be. Allison Smith manages to take readers on a journey, as she recounts her coping with the loss of her older brother, Roy. She is unsentimental when the reader see's her starving herself, as she tries to make sense of Roy's death. Smith uses the craft of memoir beautifully as she shows readers the exact moment that she stopped believing in Jesus. With amazing concepts like the "before people",The people who didn't know Roy had died, and...more

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Oct 21, 2009 Lori rated it 5 of 5 stars

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...more

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Jul 25, 2009 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 4 of 5 stars

Alison Smith and her brother, Roy,
were as close as siblings can be
when they were children. Suddenly,
at eighteen, Roy is killed in a
terrible automobile accident. His
loss to the family is like an
enormous black hole, sucking
all the other members of the family
into never-never land.

This is the first book I've ever
received from a book publisher and
I was terrified I would hate it and
have to pan it. (sigh of relief)
Not a chance here. Alison Smith is
an excellent storyteller, with a
perfect...more

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Dec 07, 2008 Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: bereaved siblings, people interested in memoir, people who can handle glbt litA

Recommended to Anne by: empty room bibliography

A memoir by Alison Smith. Her only brother Roy died in a car accident the summer that he at 18, about to go off to college, & Alison was 15. The memoir covers mostly the 3 yrs from her brother's death, until his 3rd anniversary - when Alison reaches his age & turns a corner. It ends somewhat abruptly here, & I wonder if she has really turned the corner and start to deal with her anorexia, how she copes with going to college, etc. However, it is a very detailed portrait of a family's...more

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Sep 02, 2010 April rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-reads

I am torn as to how to review/rate this book. It is not a novel. It represents someone's life. A memoir. I fall somewhere between a two star and three star rating. While there were some real take-your-breath-away moments, I found the book as a whole to be eh.

Wrapped in grief, it is the life story of a sister who lost her brother tragically in a car accident. From her side, we see how tragedy affects the entire family. How as "all the parents have left" her life is formidably changed forever. Sh...more

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Dec 17, 2011 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved this beautifully written memoir. It reads very much like a "coming of age" novel and explores so many facets of life at age fifteen. Alison is 15 when her only sibling, Roy, is killed in a sudden and terrible accident. She and her brother were so close that they shared a common nickname, Alroy, and suddenly Alison has to figure out who she is without Roy. She attends an all-girls Catholic school and tries to come to terms with her lack of religious conviction. She feels that God and Roy...more

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Apr 30, 2013 Louise Behrendt rated it 3 of 5 stars

I started out really liking this memoir, about the death of Alison Smith's brother, Roy. So often when it comes to the death of a child it is easy to forget about the effect it has on siblings, and this book puts that all into perspective. I found particularly poignant the notion that Alison was attracted to people who had no knowledge of Roy's death; the "before people," because as to them, Roy was still alive. The book's description of Alison's discovery of her sexuality seemed true to me, too...more

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Jun 28, 2012 Writer's Relief rated it 4 of 5 stars

Alison Smith was sure of two things as a little girl: She loved her big brother Roy, and she believed in Jesus Christ. But following Roy’s sudden death in a car crash, Alison is left to face the world alone and, when she turns to God, she finds nothing.

Smith’s memoir starts out chronicling the aftermath of her brother’s tragic death—her parents’ immense grief, the newspaper articles detailing the gruesome crash, her own struggle to find her place in the world. It’s not until Alison is sent to a...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

The title refers to Adam in the Garden of Eden, an apt metaphor for Smith's imperfect, even devastating, coming of age. Critics loved this first memoir, heavy in themes but subtle in presentation. Although Smith focuses primarily on herself, her relationship with Roy--and, through vivid memories, Roy himself--form the narrative's backdrop. Some passages verge on the maudlin. Smith saves food for Roy, cherishes his old sneakers, and communes with him at night. Yet she describes her life without R

...more

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Apr 04, 2012 Lydia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: ya-lgbt

I really want to classify this novel as contemporary, but the time in it is a bit dated. The key is this novel made me cry.

Alison and her brother Roy were so close, despite their 2.5 years difference in age, that her mother called them "AlRoy". When Royden dies in a car crash, Alison is caught in a spiritual conundrum. Their entire family are highly bound in the Catholic religion and Alison is in wonder where and when her brother will return to her. In the process, Alison must also experience he...more

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Aug 25, 2012 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

Name All the Animals is a book about a girl named Allison Smith. She has an older brother named Roy, and they are quite close. Their parents are very religious, and the family unit seems strong and basically happy. Until the unthinkable happens. Tragedy strikes and the older son is taken from them. The rest of the book is the family trying to deal with and accept this devastating loss.

It is hard for me to review this book, as I too lost a sibling in their teens. When I saw the description, I wa...more Name All the Animals is a book about a girl named Allison Smith. She has an older brother named Roy, and they are quite close. Their parents are very religious, and the family unit seems strong and basically happy. Until the unthinkable happens. Tragedy strikes and the older son is taken from them. The rest of the book is the family trying to deal with and accept this devastating loss.

It is hard for me to review this book, as I too lost a sibling in their teens. When I saw the description, I was excited because I have not read any books where the author had experienced something so similar to my experience. Maybe I was looking for validation, and so any disappointments I had with it are because of my issues. I do understand the isolation and the feeling of being different. And also even the separation between the surviving child and the parents, as each person is dealing with such an enormous amount of grief, it sometimes threatens to swallow you whole.

I admit that my experience drew me closer to God, but I definitely understand how for others it would make them question, reexamine, and ultimately reject their childhood faith. Each person must seek the truth, and when they find it, they must make a choice. So I get all that. I guess for me, the end left me a little empty. It seems pretty apparent there were issues between Allison and her parents regarding her faith and sexuality. I guess the little bit at the end was to say that her dad was making some type of small baby steps toward acceptance. I think for me, it would have made more emotional impact if I had seen a glimpse of what the intervening years had been like. Was she always on speaking terms with her parents? Did they have some kind of unspoken agreement to not talk about those areas in which they disagreed, just to maintain a relationship? Is the absence of any real postscript about her mother meant to imply there was no further mother-daughter relationship? These are the questions I had at the end of the book. I know not every ending is a happy one, and I am okay with that. This one just did not leave me with the feeling I had the whole picture.(less)

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Nov 01, 2010 Isabel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I actually really liked this book a lot. I would have given it 4 stars if the ending gave me (the reader) a better sense of closure. I'm a closer kinda gal. I like things to be wrapped up.
I guess the memoir was supposed to truly focus on the author's handling of her brother's death. And in that case...it does a great job, especially the question and answer section at the end of the book. But her sexuality begins to play an enormous role and there doesn't seem to be any explanation of how she and...more

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Mar 19, 2009 Meegan Soule' rated it 5 of 5 stars

Name All the Animals, for me, was a theraputic journey. It is about death, grief, and recovery. The writer, Alison, experiences the death of her brother when she is only 15. He is killed tragically in a car accident. The book takes you into the heart and lives of her family as they walk through this very dark spot in their lives. I absolutely loved her style of writing and how she was so raw, taking the reader to unexpected places in her life. Losing my own brother tragically, I was able to iden...more

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May 30, 2012 Hayley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult, nonfiction, auto-biography-memoir

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 24, 2012 Tima rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs, read-in-2012

A very touching, loving memoir of a girl's struggle of life after the unexpected death of her brother and the story of her first love, a highly controversial one in her religious family & school.

At times, I found Alison Smith to be infuriating in her writing style. I can't explain exactly what set me off, I was just rubbed the wrong way. Such a tiny, almost insignificant problem though. Overall, this story was a unique coming-of-age tale intertwined with grief. Grief in the loss of her broth...more

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Jan 26, 2008 Kate rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biographies-and-memoirs, non-fiction, women-s-issues, books-read-2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Alison Smith's book is ostensibly the story of how her family comes to deal with the premature death of her older brother, Roy, a quiet, physics loving track student who is killed in a car accident the summer he is supposed to go off to college.

In fact, the book is more of a young girl coming of age in the early 80's.

The book begins with loving memories of brother Roy, and of their parents. After some background, we fast forward to the day on which Roy is killed and the days immediately followin...more

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Jan 29, 2009 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

The phrases rattled around inside of me. I had no name for the feelings they conjured up. Like captions for a set of lost photographs, I knew what the individual words meant but I didn't know what to attach them to...we had lost the thread of our own story. Grief takes that from you. It makes the familiar, the quotidian, turn strange.

I turned off the trail from time to time when we passed a particularly inviting pile of fallen leaves and crashed through them; their dessicated bodies flew up, cau...more

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Jul 30, 2007 Amy added it Recommends it for: anyone who likes memoirs

Shelves: memoirs

I'm currently on a memoir/creative non-fiction kick. I picked this one up with two others, and I could only get 1/2 through it. My inability to read it is not related to the writing. For me, it hit way too close to home.

The book is about a young girl whose brother (I think Roy is 17 or 18 and about to leave for college) is killed in a car accident. The book deals with the aftermath of the accident and the impact it has on her and her family.

This is the first time I've read a book where someone...more

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Jun 07, 2007 Glenn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

Alison Smith’s “Name All the Animals” manages a very difficult balancing act. It is, to me, a tri-partite story. The main story of the terrible grief of losing a loved one, the events and impact of a strong religious faith both being practiced, tested and transformed, and the emerging sexual identity of a teenager, all during the period of grief following a great tragedy.

If Alison Smith failed to make any of the three legs of the story stand convincingly, the whole book would’ve toppled over. An...more

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Feb 16, 2009 Lori Tobias Christiansen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Another memoir and another book I loved. This is a quiet book, but compelling and very well written. When she is 15, Alison's brother is killed in a car accident. The book is basically how she and her very religious family deal with it. She has her first romance -- lesbian -- and is found out at her private Catholic school. She develops an eating disorder, etc. Her mother is in total denial. Yet, her family is lovely in its love. Don't know any other way to say it.

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Feb 21, 2012 Candace rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs

I found this book totally captivating. I read the whole thing over the course of 24 hours. For one, I have a deep personal connection to the experience of losing a sibling. I honestly think I would have plowed through this book just as easily even if I didn't. It was so honest and telling. I felt for very character in the book. I am seriously baffled by the reviews that found it boring. Although - of course - y'all are entitled to your own opinions. For me, it was gripping and sentimental. Absol...more

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Mar 14, 2013 Liralen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, ed-etc, lgbtq, non-fiction, religion, book-club, reviewed

They kept calling her Alroy.

That's what got to me, I think -- that her parents, in their grief, couldn't see how much damage it might do to allow their living child's identity to stay so wrapped up in that of her deceased brother. None of the adults in her life did much of a job of looking out for her, honestly; her parents trusted that the nuns would see to it while the nuns assumed that her parents were keeping an eye out. Her parents were grieving, of course, but I think to some degree they f...more

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Jun 06, 2009 Candice rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a work of non-fiction, dealing with the effects of a young boy's death on his family. It is told from the point of view of his sister, Alison, who was 15 when her 18-year-old brother died. The book is saturated with grief, but is not depressing. It shows how everyone deals with grief in his or her own way.

The time frame takes Alison through her last three years of high school at a Catholic Girls' school in New York state and include her first romance.

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