Too Close to the Falls - Hardcover

Gildiner, Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067089463X ISBN 13: 9780670894635

Publisher: Viking, 2001

Synopsis

In a memoir about life in small-town America, the author relates her adventures growing up in the 1950s as the daughter of a pharmacist in Lewiston, New York, a small village near Niagara Falls.

About this title

Review:

‘The writing is spot-on, Gildiner at her best and funniest describing the palpable happiness of her chaotic childhood...and escapades so incredible that I turned back several times to make sure this really was a memoir.’ Laurie Graham, Daily Mail

‘Singular and wonderful.’ Time Out

‘A memoir of considerable charm.’ Sunday Times

‘This coming-of-age memoir cries out to be read aloud. Gildiner writes as if still a precocious, hyperactive child who knows no boundaries and is forever up to escapades, both comic and tragic...A dizzy, enchanting read.’ Publishing News

‘Charming and funny...the ideal book for escaping into someone else's family if you’ve had enough of your own.’ Sunday Express

From the Back Cover:

It is the mid-1950s in Lewiston, a sleepy town near Niagara Falls, famous only for the invention of the cocktail. Divorce is unheard of, mothers wear high heels to the beauty salon, and television has only just arrived. But with no siblings to provide role-models; a workaholic father chosen by most of her class as Lewiston's present-day saint; a mother who looks the part of the perfect 50s housewife but refuses to play it ('We ate all of our dinners in restaurants...Our fridge contained only allergy serum, coke and maraschino cherries. Our oven was only turned on to dry wet mittens on the door and the only cooking smell I remember from my youth is that of burning wool'); and a gambling-obsessed best friend, Roy, who is 30 years older, perhaps it's hardly surprising that Cathy grows up a little eccentric. Especially considering that the family doctor's prescription for her hyperactivity is a full-time job in her father's pharmacy – at four.

Cathy is rarely out of trouble whether it's asking why seeing Elvis below the waist is a sin, stabbing the school bully with a compass, breaking through police cordons to interview the Tuscadora Indians or swapping holy water for vodka to test the local priest's alcoholism. She even delivers Nembutal to a sleazy Marilyn Monroe who promptly makes an assignation with Roy. Her highly unusual adventures make compulsive, often moving, reading, but are always hilariously counterbalanced by all the conventional concerns of 50s smalltown life – TV and rock 'n' roll, matching mother and daughter outfits, teenage rebellion, communism and catholicism. Like all really good memoirs, Too Close to the Falls sneaks up on you; at first you're just reading it quietly to yourself and suddenly you're having to restrain yourself from reading great chunks out to everyone around you.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 067089463X
• ISBN 13: 9780670894635
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368