Book-It 'o12! Book #14
The Fifty Books Challenge, year three! (Years one, two, and three just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: Name All the Animals by Alison Smith
Details: Copyright 2004, Scribner Press
Synopsis (By Way of Front and Back Flaps): "A luminous, poignant true story, Alison Smith's stunning first book, Name All the Animals, is an unparalleled account of grief and secret love: the tale of a family clinging to the memory of a lost child, and a young woman struggling to define herself in the wake of his loss.
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 to return. During the day, she breaks every rule at Our Lady of Mercy School for Girls, where the baffled but loving nuns offer prayer, Shakespeare, and a job running the switchboard. In the end, Alison finds her own way to survive: a startling and taboo first love that helps her discover a world beyond the death of her brother.
An intimate book written in clear-eyed prose, Name All the Animals announces a brilliant new writer with a keen insight into the emotional life of the American family, the power of sibling love and loyalty, and the excruciating joy of first, forbidden love. Smith tells the story through her own fifteen-year-old eyes, with such expert pacing and narrative suspense that readers will find the book hard to put down.
Heartbreaking but hopeful, this is ultimately a book less about loss than it is about love -- about the excitement and anguish of Alison's first love, about her parents' enduring romance, about a community's passion for its faith, and about a well-loved boy who dies too young. A fiercely beautiful, redemptive book, it is sure to be a classic."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This came up as a suggested read (on both Amazon and like sites as well as through my library) as I've been delving into memoirs of personal tragedy and struggle.
How I Liked It: This memoir is surprising (maybe even shocking) in that it reads so much like a novel. Not in the sense that it's too fanciful to be realistic or falls victim to fiction's pratfalls, but in that the writing is frequently staggeringly excellent, particularly when it comes to the author's characters and her pacing.
Of course, that begs the question: are the characters really "hers" if they're real people? Is the pacing to be attributed to the author when she's merely recounting the events as they happened? Actually, I think the very fact the story is true (at least in the sense that this is the author professing to tell her life story) is all the more reason for it to fail. The Source of All Things frequently fell prey to the author's memory and convolutions therein. By contrast, Smith has essentially taken the lump of clay of her memory and carved the story relatable to an outside audience (i.e. those not the author).
The author's characters (or rather, the characters interpreted and related by the author of the real people surrounding the events) are vivid and Smith captures each hue. This is especially notable given that so many could've easily fallen into two-dimensional caricatures: the scolding teachers, her relations with her sometimes cruel and excluding classmates, her cold and distant mother... the list goes on. But Smith is careful to keep each and every one of them nuanced and as such, they feel much more real.
Her storytelling is poetic and compelling, but certainly the weak point of the book is that the author too frequently relies on ciphers. Many questions go unanswered and story-lines dangling. The author chooses to end the book not at the present day, but rather three years after the incident, when the author is then at the age her brother was when he lost his life (and undergoes an epiphany of sorts). She includes an epilogue a decade later, but a few too many questions remain not really answered.
All in all, the book's transgressions are far outweighed by its attributes, particularly taking into account this book is, after all, a memoir, not a novel. The book is still a masterpiece of a read and hopefully setting of a precedent (and raising a bar) for books similar.
Notable: In the acknowledgements, the author thanks another memoirist, Susanna Kaysen, who penned the legendary Girl, Interrupted.
Title: Name All the Animals by Alison Smith
Details: Copyright 2004, Scribner Press
Synopsis (By Way of Front and Back Flaps): "A luminous, poignant true story, Alison Smith's stunning first book, Name All the Animals, is an unparalleled account of grief and secret love: the tale of a family clinging to the memory of a lost child, and a young woman struggling to define herself in the wake of his loss.
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 to return. During the day, she breaks every rule at Our Lady of Mercy School for Girls, where the baffled but loving nuns offer prayer, Shakespeare, and a job running the switchboard. In the end, Alison finds her own way to survive: a startling and taboo first love that helps her discover a world beyond the death of her brother.
An intimate book written in clear-eyed prose, Name All the Animals announces a brilliant new writer with a keen insight into the emotional life of the American family, the power of sibling love and loyalty, and the excruciating joy of first, forbidden love. Smith tells the story through her own fifteen-year-old eyes, with such expert pacing and narrative suspense that readers will find the book hard to put down.
Heartbreaking but hopeful, this is ultimately a book less about loss than it is about love -- about the excitement and anguish of Alison's first love, about her parents' enduring romance, about a community's passion for its faith, and about a well-loved boy who dies too young. A fiercely beautiful, redemptive book, it is sure to be a classic."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This came up as a suggested read (on both Amazon and like sites as well as through my library) as I've been delving into memoirs of personal tragedy and struggle.
How I Liked It: This memoir is surprising (maybe even shocking) in that it reads so much like a novel. Not in the sense that it's too fanciful to be realistic or falls victim to fiction's pratfalls, but in that the writing is frequently staggeringly excellent, particularly when it comes to the author's characters and her pacing.
Of course, that begs the question: are the characters really "hers" if they're real people? Is the pacing to be attributed to the author when she's merely recounting the events as they happened? Actually, I think the very fact the story is true (at least in the sense that this is the author professing to tell her life story) is all the more reason for it to fail. The Source of All Things frequently fell prey to the author's memory and convolutions therein. By contrast, Smith has essentially taken the lump of clay of her memory and carved the story relatable to an outside audience (i.e. those not the author).
The author's characters (or rather, the characters interpreted and related by the author of the real people surrounding the events) are vivid and Smith captures each hue. This is especially notable given that so many could've easily fallen into two-dimensional caricatures: the scolding teachers, her relations with her sometimes cruel and excluding classmates, her cold and distant mother... the list goes on. But Smith is careful to keep each and every one of them nuanced and as such, they feel much more real.
Her storytelling is poetic and compelling, but certainly the weak point of the book is that the author too frequently relies on ciphers. Many questions go unanswered and story-lines dangling. The author chooses to end the book not at the present day, but rather three years after the incident, when the author is then at the age her brother was when he lost his life (and undergoes an epiphany of sorts). She includes an epilogue a decade later, but a few too many questions remain not really answered.
All in all, the book's transgressions are far outweighed by its attributes, particularly taking into account this book is, after all, a memoir, not a novel. The book is still a masterpiece of a read and hopefully setting of a precedent (and raising a bar) for books similar.
Notable: In the acknowledgements, the author thanks another memoirist, Susanna Kaysen, who penned the legendary Girl, Interrupted.