Too Close to the Falls: A Memoir - Tapa dura

'TCTTF has only one fault. It ends too soon.' Toronto Life

’TCTTF shimmies and shakes with Gildiner's hilarious antics...Her writing sparkles on the page and the episodes she recounts have the clarity of ice after a winter storm in Lewiston. This is a memoir that makes the world seem fresh again, and worthwhile.' Literary Review of Canada

'Here is a memoir to prove that life is stranger than fiction. Both funny and true, TCTTF depicts the formative years of an extraordinary child, but it also captures the essence of childhood itself. The combination is altogether compelling; I cannot recommend this book highly enough... A fascinating childhood is no guarantee of a fascinating memoir. It still takes a gifted writer to translate the past into a work of art, and Gildiner is a gifted writer. Her prose is intensely colorful, like a concentrate, but never overwhelming or laborious in its details. Against a vivid backdrop, she brings into focus those moments when the child's world and the adult world intersect, when illusions are shattered and understanding begins.' Toronto Star

A prize-winning, best-selling, rivetingly dark and funny memoir of a most unusual girl growing up in a small town near Niagara Falls in the 50s: 'Anyone who ever was, or has, a child considered different in some way will enjoy this book.' Globe & Mail

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.