In 1984, 15-year-old Alison Smith begins to take ice skating lessons. In July, she slips and falls, and while sprawled on the frozen surface she discovers that she is bleeding. When her mother arrives, Alison learns that she has just had her first period. The next morning, her older brother Roy is killed in a car crash.

Sometimes life delivers these strangely symbolic connections, and there’s nothing we can do about them—except in Smith’s case, she wrote a memoir.

The world in Name All the Animals is one that is deeply embedded in faith. Every morning, Alison’s father comes into her room to bless her with several Catholic relics. Alison is a student at Our Lady of Mercy School for Girls, and she sees God regularly—until her brother dies. After his death, God vanishes, and Alison too begins to vanish.

She wanders around the house at night, looking in on Roy’s empty room; she pushes her food around on her plate and then secretes it away into a paper bag. After dinner she visits the fort she and Roy built in the backyard, leaving the food there as an offering, and every time it disappears.

But Name All the Animals isn’t only about grief; it’s also a love story, one that begins when Alison meets the new girl at school, Terry. At the same time—another one of those weird coincidences that crop up in life—one of Alison’s teachers assigns her to debate gay and lesbian rights. Alison spends hours and hours in the public library reading about homosexuality; Terry lends her books about Sappho; and when the day of the debate comes, Alison argues that gays and lesbians deserve all the rights that heterosexuals have.

Everybody reacts the way they are supposed to react. Her classmates are shocked but they seem to quickly forget about it; her mother, who learns about the debate from the teacher, is appalled but after expressing her disgust pretends that it never happened; her teacher who assigned her the task is proud and gives her an A. But more importantly, Terry comes out to her.

Smith’s detailing of her first love is simple, luminous, full of wonder. The dustjacket of the book describes it as “a startling and taboo first love that helps her discover a world beyond the death of her brother.” There may be some taboo moments—how can there not be, with two girls in Catholic school girl uniforms?—but it is no more startling than any other first love. And Terry does more than help Alison discover that there is life beyond grief; she feeds her, physically and emotionally.

Name All the Animals is a graceful little book. Smith has a deft touch with language, and builds a quick-moving narrative about adolescence, coming out, and living with the dead. Her memoir is more than a memorial to her brother Roy. It is a memorial to her first love; it is a memorial to her childhood devotion to God; it is a memorial to her parents, who loved their children very much. It could have been a rather depressing memoir about death and grief, but Smith’s direct simplicity has ultimately resulted in a hopeful tale about life and what it means to love.

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