Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir

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.

this is a compelling and touching book, ringing particularly true to me because i am of the same generation as tirone smith, a child of working stiffs, and a connecticut native. words like "cloakroom" and references to warm milk brought me right back to my grammar school classrooms. her story is generally evocative of a child's life in the 50's and 60's -- hardly an enlightened time in the working class world and specifically evocative of her own unique life. tirone smith definitely and clearly illuminates her childhood as one which is deserving of some bit of sympathy, but does not ask for that sympathy or expect (or want) it. her dad would be very proud of her.

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.

"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.