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Mary-Ann Tirone Smith
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Book
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Publisher | Allison & Busby | ||
ISBN | 9780749008938 | ||
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Reviewer
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Jayne
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Synopsis
Mary-Ann Tirone Smith grew up in New England during the 1950s, the daughter of an extended French-Italian family. Smith's neighbourhood was typical small-town America - everyone's door was left unlocked at night, and the school, church, library, pub and grocery shop were all within walking distance. In many ways, it was a typical rough-and-tumble childhood, but someone would shatter it and change Smith's life and that of the town, forever. Smith's family is peopled with wonderful characters - her mother who's always on the verge of a nervous breakdown; her adoring father who sees to waking Mary-Ann each morning to get her to school on time; Uncle Guido who cooks the annual Italian feast, and numerous aunts and cousins who parade through her life with love, food and endless stories of the old days. And then there's her brother, Tyler. An autistic before anyone knew what that meant, Tyler was unable to bear noise of any kind. To him, the sound of crying, laughing or phones ringing was 'a cloud of barbed needles', and in order to compensate for this, he'd substitute one pain with another - he'd harm himself. Hanging over this world is the shadow of a killer. Bob Malm lurks throughout Smith's joyous and chaotic family portrait, until one night in December 1953, when the havoc he causes forever alters her world. "Girls of Tender Age" is one of those rare books, like Angela's "Ashes or The Lovely Bones", which forever changes its readers because of its beauty, its power and remarkable wit.
Review
This book tells of the life of Mary-Ann Tyrone Smith who grew up in small town America in the 1950's, with the life of her family and the problems that don't make life easy growing up.
Mary-Ann has a brother called Tyler who is Autistic and spends the whole of his life at home engrossed in Military Books such as the Jane's Book of Aircraft and Shipping. He reads very intensely, and is at the very intelligent end of the Autistic Spectrum. But even so no-one dare shout or cry near him because this sends him off on a sequence of running up and down, or biting his left arm till such time that he makes it bleed badly.
What Mary-Ann copes with as a youngster in this very dysfunctional family, I can not imagine how she lives to tell the tale. This book was not only riviting, and a real page turner, it also shows heartbreak and the disruption on a family where there were no facilities for caring for someone with Autism.
Mary-Ann also has to cope with the murder of her best school friend Irene and that is the reason she decides to write this book, because as you will see her world collapses when Irene dies, and many would say this was a book that was to help the healing process.
I have to congratulate you Mary-Ann on the way that you have told the story. It is written from a very central perspective and a loving one, you have done wonders with this insight and it is rare to find a book that is for ever changing lives. It keeps the readers glued to the story because of the power of its content and the awful crime that which is so harrowing at the heart of its substance. I loved this book and will recommend it to many others because there may be others out there who are experienceing what you have been through, not only with your brother but with the death of a very dear and precious friend. God bless you for sharing this family time with us the readers.
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