Girls of Tender Age, MaryAnn Tirone Smith
Girls of Tender Age, MaryAnn Tirone Smith
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Girls of Tender Age
A Memoir

Author: Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

Narrator: Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

Abridged: 6 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/11/2006


Synopsis

In Girls of Tender Age, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith fully articulates with great humor and tenderness the wild jubilance of an extended French-Italian family struggling to survive in a post-World War II housing project in Hartford, Connecticut. Smith seamlessly combines a memoir whose intimacy matches that of Angela's Ashes with the tale of a community plagued by a malevolent predator that holds the emotional and cultural resonance of The Lovely Bones.

Smith's Hartford neighborhood is small-town America, where everyone’s door is unlocked and the school, church, library, drugstore, 5 & 10, grocery, and tavern are all within walking distance. Her family is peopled with memorable characters—her possibly psychic mother who's always on the verge of a nervous breakdown, her adoring father who makes sure she has something to eat in the morning beyond her usual gulp of Hershey’s syrup, her grandfather who teaches her to bash in the heads of the eels they catch on Long Island Sound, Uncle Guido who makes the annual bagna cauda, and the numerous aunts and cousins who parade through her life with love and food and endless stories of the old days. And then there’s her brother, Tyler.

Smith's household was “different.” Little Mary-Ann couldn't have friends over because her older brother, Tyler, an autistic before anyone knew what that meant, was unable to bear noise of any kind. To him, the sound of crying, laughing, phones ringing, or toilets flushing was “a cloud of barbed needles” flying into his face. Subject to such an assault, he would substitute that pain with another: he'd try to chew his arm off. Tyler was Mary-Ann's real-life Boo Radley, albeit one whose bookshelves sagged under the weight of the World War II books he collected and read obsessively.

Hanging over this rough-and-tumble American childhood is the sinister shadow of an approaching serial killer. The menacing Bob Malm lurks throughout this joyous and chaotic family portrait, and the havoc he unleashes when the paths of innocence and evil cross one early December evening in 1953 forever alters the landscape of Smith's childhood.

Girls of Tender Age is one of those books that will forever change its readers because of its beauty and power and remarkable wit.

About Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith is the author of eight novels. She has lived all her life in Connecticut, except for two years when she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon.


Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Sara on 2007-08-06 16:57:06

It is a compelling story - sad as well. But, worth reading!

Goodreads review by Bren fall in love with the sea. on April 10, 2024

I enjoyed reading this biographical account of the Author's life in Hartford Connecticut. Several people I know also read this book and were very impressed. Two of the major issues covered are Autism. (Author's brother is autistic. And a serial child predator who was around at that time. This is not f......more

Goodreads review by Baba on March 12, 2020

Mary-Anne Tirone Smith's intimate and open memoir shares the stories ofthe impact of having an autistic brother in the 1950s and having to cope with a friend being murdered by a paedophile! 6 out of 12.......more

Goodreads review by Susie on March 18, 2010

I re-read this book recently and found it just as compelling as I did the first time. It is an exceptional memoir that blends personal history, true crime, and a portrait of autism - seamlessly. I wish I could write like Mary-Ann Tirone Smith.......more

Goodreads review by Stefanie on March 13, 2013

This book grew on me, big time. If only I could write something half as good as this one day.........more

Goodreads review by Alexandra on October 08, 2018

This book is one of the best memoirs I've ever read. Love it.......more


Quotes

"A masterful fiction writer tells her own story: one little girl dies, the other comes of age and gives voice to herself and her murdered friend. Riveting, heartbreaking, hilarious, I loved this book for its compassion, its vividness, and its flashes of justifiable anger. A life-affirming read."

-- Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True