Name All the Animals by Alison Smith

Alison Smith lost her older brother in a tragic car crash when he was only 18, just about to leave for college. The book starts out with Alison getting her period and telling her brother, Roy. The exchange is sweet, and shows, in only a few paragraphs, the kind of person and brother, he was. The story really starts in the next chapter, when two policemen bring the Smiths news of Roy's death. This book is a memoir, and I like the way that Alison emphasizes that fact that it is her father that really breaks down, not her mother. Throughout the first couple chapters we see Mrs. Smith as a strong woman, a woman who believes that she can change the past by just pretending it didn't happen. Alroy (the collective name for Alison and Roy) call her erasing technique "playing Kremlin" and their father says that that is exactly what she is doing with Roy's death. This book dose not seem to be too action packed yet, and I don't expect that it will be, but the author seems to be good enough that the story dose not half to be.