000			03110n m a2200241 a 4500
001			012208
005			20231009192153.0
008			070413t2006----nyuob---------000-u-eng-u
020			_a0-7432-7977-8
082	0		_a92 SMI
100	1		_aSmith, Mary-Ann Tirone _d, 1944-
245	1	0	_aGirls of tender age _b: A memoir _c/ Mary-Ann Tirone Smith
260			_aNew York _b: Free Press _c, c2006.
300			_a285 p. _b: Photos, map.
520			_aIn 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 ofThe 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 Ageis one of those books that will forever change its readers because of its beauty and power and remarkable wit.
650		4	_aSmith, Mary-Ann Tirone _x- Childhood and youth
650		4	_aSmith, Mary-Ann Tirone _x- Homes and haunts - Connecticut - Hartford
650		4	_aNovelists, American _x-Homes and haunts _z-Connecticut _z-Hartford
650		4	_aNovelists, American _x- 20th century - Biography
650			_aHartford (Conn.) _x-Social life and customs
650		4	_aChild molesters _x- Connecticut - Hartford
942			_cMO
999			_c231032 _d231032