Name All the Animals : A Memoir (Paperback)

from twryan72

I was very interested to read this book because I lost my brother 5 years ago. Alison was so young when her loss occurred, so reading the book caused me to ponder this loss as child vs. adult. I was 31, already married and a mother. This of course, was a tremendous sorrow and devastation for me, ...

from bobbieharv

Her brother is killed in an accident and she falls in love with her friend at Catholic school and they're caught by the nuns. A little too much of the dead brother, but all in all a very moving well-written memoir.

from debnance

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 th...

from artistlibrarian

I admit that I love memoirs. And memoirs are either emotionally haunting or literary bores. Yet Alison Smith's recollection of late childhood is somehow neither. Her focus is on the loss of her brother, a sibling so close in friendship that their mother often refers to them as one entity, Alroy (...

from pdebolt

Alison Smith has given her readers a vivid insight into true, unrelenting grief - her own and that of her parents. Hers is a sorrow that goes beyond tears, and is assauged only by the belief that her brother will someday, somehow reappear. Her parents' deep belief in God is of no solace to Alison...