Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir [Paperback]

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2007

With beauty, power, and remarkable wit, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith interweaves a bittersweet portrait of growing up among the working stiffs of 1950s Hartford, Connecticut, with the chilling progress of a serial pedophile who threatens to shatter her small town's innocence. In Girls of Tender Age, Smith lovingly evokes the jubilance and chaos of life in her extended French-Italian family and the challenges of living with her brother Tyler, an autistic at a time before anyone knew what that meant. Hanging over Smith's rough-and-tumble youth is the shadow of the approaching killer who forever alters the landscape of her childhood.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The recovery of repressed memories of the 1953 murder by a serial killer of an 11-year-old friend and neighbor in a blue-collar enclave in Hartford, Conn., triggered Smith's absorbing memoir. In recalling her childhood, she is compelled to describe her upbringing in a fractured family whose existence centered on placating her older brother, Tyler, an autistic boy who couldn't bear sounds of any kind (crying, laughing, sneezing, dog barking). The narrative is further enriched by the author's investigations into the life and crimes of the psychopath who preyed on her friend and other little girls, and by her insights about the unequal rights of girls and women before feminism. The making of a writer is the subtext here; forbidden by her strict Catholic upbringing to question her parents, Smith was forced to develop her imagination. She was blessed with a nurturing father, who was the lifesaving antidote to her cold, selfish mother. Smith's ironic narrative voice, familiar to readers of her Poppy Rice mysteries and her sensitive and witty novels, serves her well. Larger than the sum of its parts, this book illuminates a social class as it recounts a tangled story of a family and a crime. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Bookmarks Magazine

After reading Girls, critics saw parallels between Smith's life and fiction, in particular the second novel in the Poppy Rice mystery series, She's Not There, which features a serial killer of teenage girls. Girls, at once a moving, frank, and often funny memoir, also painfully examines the evil that lurked beneath the surface of a quiet, all-American, working-class neighborhood. Smith alternates memories of her childhood with descriptions of Bob Malm's sexual predation; as an adult, she tracked down the details surrounding her friend's death, from the autopsy report to transcripts of Malm's trial. While the former story is heartfelt, the latter is cold and impersonal, a style that jarred a few critics. Yet overall, Girls is an unforgettable memorial to Irene—and Smith's own past.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 289 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (January 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743279786
• ISBN-13: 978-0743279789
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #580,304 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I have lived all my life in Connecticut except for the two years I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. Presently, I write from my crow's nest in East Haven, breaking periodically to ride the rails from New Haven to New York where I do enjoy the city lights. I have two children, Jene, an RN at Yale-New Haven's clinics, and Jere, who has had a blog since 2004: A Red Sox Fan From Pinstripe Territory (http://letsgosox.blogspot.com) Not only does he cover Red Sox lore and stats, he reviews my books--when he's not co-writing them with me i.e. DIRTY WATER: A RED SOX MYSTERY.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Million Little Truths, January 28, 2006

By 

Louise Colligan (Tarrytown, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir (Hardcover)

In a very bad week for memoirs, I picked up Mary Ann Tirone Smith's haunting, Girls of Tender Age. I, too, grew up in Hartford in the fifties and sixies, very close to her neighborhood. Our paths surely must have crossed at Hartford Public High School, in the same corner stores, parks, and churches, though we didn't know each other. Every page rings a bell, sometimes a mournfully when she grieves the loss of a murdered childhood friend; the deaths of so many much-loved relatives; the death of her very own childhood as the sister of an autistic brother. But many joys ring out in her book--the local Italian club; her uncle's one-night only bagna cauda sending its garlicky, and forbidden perfumes through her house; an elevator her mechanically-minded brother hijacked in Fox's Department Store; the way Lincoln Dairy ice cream could make you forget the hurts of the day. Mary Ann captures that time when adults assumed we knew more about certain things than we did and less about what we weren't supposed to know--their secrets.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book of the year, and it's only February!, February 4, 2006

By 

E. A. Montgomery (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This isn't just the sort of book I could use words like 'evocative' and 'compelling' and 'heartwarming' about with a straight face, it's one that makes you wish you'd known the people involved. A simple, straightforward account of a life that was anything but, Girls of a Tender Age required me to stay up much too late and finish it in one sitting. Unlike many authors, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith has no time for naval gazing. Her look is outward, to the people and place that formed her, and her compassion for both is evident in every tale. It's so hard to discuss this book as part of the joy in it is discovering how she unwraps the events. While the author and I are of different generations we share an important event in our life and her exploration of that time (and it's aftermath) is simply beautiful. She does justice to those she loved and makes you love them a bit as well. Really, you should read as little about the book as possible and move on to reading it for yourself. I can't praise it enough.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very satisfying read, January 19, 2006

By 

C. Joyce (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir (Hardcover)

"Girls of Tender Age" is the first book that I've ever read by this author. I really appreciate her conversational writing style and pacing. Since this is a memoir I must mention that as a reader I never felt that Mary-Ann Tirone Smith was embellishing the story of her childhood for dramatic effect but was instead matter of factly relating the unvarnished truth whether it be good,bad or ugly. "Girls of Tender Age" is nostalgiac and funny and sad and once I started reading it I couldn't put it down until I had finished it.