Name All The Animals

1. How is the book reading going? What parts of the book have been easy or difficult for you as a reader? Why? (please reflect)
I finished the book at some point over the weekend, and I must say that I liked it overall. The ending was very good and seemed to draw it to a close perfectly. I found it difficult to read the book near the ending. I can't really explain why... It just sort of felt a bit heavy. It might have been the fact that her mother and father practically resented her for not believing in Christ, or maybe it was how she wanted to drive but just couldn't manage to go through with the test. I sort of started to feel the narrator's feelings, and I guess that's the effect of non-fiction. While I did see it as fiction most of the time because of how it was written, it felt different from a normal novel in the respect that it made me feel more for the character than I do in most novels.

2. Pick a character in the memoir that you find yourself liking. What is the role of this character? Why does the author include this character in the plot, setting, or story?
I found myself really liking Alison. In the memoir she plays the part of the protagonist, and it includes her because the book is about her. It would be rather boring to read a memoir without a main person in it. I liked her because she came off as a rather strong character. As opposed to crying when her older brother died, she started to tie herself to the Before-People that never knew Roy so that she wouldn't have to go through the pain of being pitied. She was very firm about her beliefs and her nature, and she wasn't ashamed to admit that she didn't believe in God or that she was a lesbian (well, she wasn't scared to admit that towards the end).

3. Pick a character to contrast with #2 above. Pick a character that you do not like and explain what is bothering you. How would you do it if you were the author?
A character I really disliked was Mother. She was so negative and she was practically insane. She refused to accept the fact that her daughter didn't believe in God or the fact that Alison wished she had died with Roy in the car accident. She was an opposing force to Alison the entire time and I couldn't stand her. When she started to bring the books on dealing with grief home from the library, I was wondering what she was doing. While she made it so that it seemed that she was trying to help her family get over the grief of their son dying, it just made it worse by digging up the painful memories. I doubt that I'd make the character so horrible if I was the writer, because I don't have the heart to write such a terrible antagonist... or the writing ability.

Name All The Animals 2

1. Examine how the author describes characters or people. How does she make them "real", "approachable", or use CHARACTERIZATION to allow the reader to sympathize or empathize with the character? Pick one character and examine him/her.


The writer takes characters and she slowly develops them, but in doing so she manages to make them very vivid in their personalities and descriptions. With Alison, she started off about how she was really close to her brother, and she continued to play off of that emotion so that we'd feel sympathy for her when her brother died. Then she made the character become a person who wanted to be around people who didn't always pity her and worry about her, which I find to be a very good way to develop a character. Characters that just feed off of other people's pity are not interesting at all. In fact, they're the type you'd like to kill if you could. But the author decided not to make Alison into someone like this and made her seem stronger by having her want to be around those who either hadn't known her brother (Terry) or those who knew, but didn't mention it (Mary Elizabeth). Also, the writer contrasts Alison with her father, who is seen as a sort of depressed character who can't get over his son's death. It's a nice contrast to make it so that the daughter seems to be a stronger character than the father is.

Name All The Animals

The book so far is relatively decent. I didn't like the beginning, where all it was was grief and sadness and talking about the death of the protagonist's brother, and that doesn't really interest me. I can't read about people crying and crying and crying some more, so that's why I really disliked the beginning chapters. However, I read a little bit ahead and got to around page 39, where I feel it has steadily picked up from the whole death thing. During the chapter with Paul, it was good to see a hint that there wouldn't be all this sad stuff. I predict that in the future of the novel there will be some sort of relationship going between Paul and Alison. If there is no relationship, I fear that the entire book will be flashbacks about Roy's death and Alison's father crying. But I don't want it to become all romantic. A little romance would be fine, but too much would be terrible. Hopefully the book gets better.