Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir - Tapa dura

'This is a riveting book, memory lane as a crime scene that needs to be relived to be understood. In this family saga of ethnic New England (a seldom-visited subject, but one dear to my heart), Ms. Tirone Smith has put all her energy as a writer of crime fiction to solve a mystery from her own past.' Paul Theroux

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.