Girls of Tender Age by Mary Ann Tirone Smith, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Read by)
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(Compact Disc - Bargain)
- Pub. Date: December 2005
- Sales Rank: 41,078
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: December 2005
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Format: Compact Disc
- Sales Rank: 41,078
- ISBN-13: 9780641945267
- ISBN: 0641945264
- Edition Description: Bargain
Synopsis
In Girls of Tender Age, Mary-Ann Tirone 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, Connecticut neighborhood is small-town America, a post-World War II housing project where everyone's door is unlocked and everything is within walking distance. Her family is peopled with memorable characters-her possibly psychic mother, her adoring father, 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, Mary-Ann's real-life Boo Radley. An autistic before anyone knew what that meant, Tyler was unable to bear noise of any kind. The sound of crying, laughing, phones ringing, or toilets flushing was such an assault, he would substitute that pain with another: he'd try to chew his arm off.
Hanging over this chaotic, but joyous American childhood is the sinister shadow of an approaching serial killer. The menacing Bob Malm lurks throughout this family portrait, and when the paths of innocence and evil cross one early December evening in 1953, the havoc he unleashes forever alters the landscape of Smith's childhood.
Customer Reviews
Not Your Usual Memoirby Anonymous
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September 21, 2009: This was one of the "staff picks" from my local library, and I've never been led wrong going with staff recommended books. I also was interested in the story because I grew up in a suburb of Hartford (Manchester, CT), have remained in the general area, knew a few "working stiffs" who made a career at Abbott Ball, and am familiar with a number of things that Mary Anne Tirone Smith referred to. I, too, grew up reading the Hartford Courant and Hartford Times--although my family had one more paper in the mix, the Manchester Evening Herald. (And, like Mary Anne, I read the funnies first, too.) I, too,enjoyed weddings where hoopi shoopi was a familiar refrain. I, too, remember a time when a strong and unquestinoed Catholic upbringing was ingrained. And even though I never had to experience life with a challenging, autistic family member, Tirone-Smith shares life with her brother in a whimsical way through the eyes of a child who has learned to adapt because she does not know life in any other way. And so, in reading this memoir, so many pleasant or at least familiar nostalgic thoughts came to mind. But then, Tirone-Smith does an excellent and foreboding job of slowly and methodically introducing a separate storyline biography of a dangerous psychopathic individual whose violence toward her childhood friend, Irene, ultimately severs the story and brings to an abrupt end what otherwise might have been an idyllic childhood memoir. Tirone-Smith weaves a very readable and moving memoir that serves as a fitting tribute to Irene, and serves as a reminder of just how precious life is.
I Also Recommend: Hoopi Shoopi Donna.
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