Girls of Tender Age

Anyone who knows me will have been surprised by how long it's taken me to write about Mary-Ann Tirone Smith's mesmerising memoir, Girls of Tender Age. I'm quite surprised myself, to be honest. I read this book over a year ago and I simply couldn't put the book down. Now, I know how hackneyed "unputdownable" has become (I use it far too often myself), but hand on heart, Mary-Ann's book was just that. We published it in hardback in January this year to whole-page raves in the papers (Val Hennessy in the Mail and Craig Brown in the Mail on Sunday come to mind straight away) and suddenly I realised that I wasn't alone in my passion for this book.

Mary-Ann is coming to visit us in February next year and we're looking at all sorts of ideas for getting her out and about to promote the paperback edition. In her native Connecticut, she packed out town halls when she was talking about her book - in once case, the town quite literally came to a standstill as the police cordoned off the roads round the library which was hosting Mary-Ann's talk, as more than 250 people showed up. I hope we can match that ... or at least come half way close!