Catch Me When I Fall

by Patricia Westerhof

Description

Welcome to Poplar Grove, a farming community with three generations of Dutch-Canadians. Life in the New World has not become less complicated as the decades have passed, and now, a set of dying customs is about to collide with the ways of a new generation. The balance is shifting between people comfortable holding hymnals and cleaning cows' teats and those who are uneasy with traditional expectations. A young woman grapples with contradiction between the pious appearance of her best friend's show more family and the bits of reality she hears in her friend's confidences; a woman mourns the loss of her disabled son, but also wishes to end the ritual state of mourning; a girl finds herself stranded on the battlefield between her new-age brother and her Old World parents. These people are bound by time-worn expectations and the demands of an agricultural life. With humour and insight, author Patricia Westerhof examines a place where opposing ideologies mingle, and a community struggles to redefine who and what they are. show less

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souci 87 reviews

It is a bit unusual for me to just write a review out of the blue, but this is such a lovely book! I just found out that a book had been written by a teacher at my kids' school, and I was able to borrow it from the library, and read it immediately. Then I just had to get my thoughts down straightaway.

But oh my! This book of short stories is like seeing, out of the corners of your eyes, the sad margins around people's lives that you don't see when you look straight at them

I love Westerhof's format of interlinked short stories, so characters track across each others' stories. It gives such depth to the sense of community. It reads more like one's real experience of other people than you get reading a first person novel - inside one show more person's head, or that you get from the way a novel usually concentrates on a main story and a few characters, with a central problem or tragedy.

I must also say that I love books like this that just are Canadian, without being CANADIAN, and I feel I must champion them, and recommend them as widely as possible. All the marketed, promote-able books fall into the second category, from a handful of authors, which is a shame. "Received" is so boring.

Finally, I personally enjoy books that mention Red Deer. My mom is from there, and for me, as well as in Canadian culture, it is a town with a multi-layered symbolic value. It is a place we know, but not the place in which we live.

In other words, get this small book, and read it, if you can. show less

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