Too Close to the Falls

Originally, I thought I’d enjoy Too Close to the Falls because I grew up in the area and I would recognize many references to the region. But this memoir, about growing up in the 50’s and 60’s around Niagara Falls, is so much more than that. It’s a coming of age story told by Cathy McClure, an only child whose father owned the local pharmacy in the days when drugs were actually delivered to your home and whose mother didn’t fit the mold of the fifties Eisenhower housewife who cooked, cleaned and maintained a happy home. It’s also a hysterical look at small town life through the eyes of an innocent child. This reader was laughing out loud at page after page of uproarious anecdotes.

When Cathy is four years old, the McClure’s show more are told by their pediatrician that their precocious child needed to burn off energy by doing manual labor in her father’s store. The author puts it this way:

“I seem to have been ‘born eccentric’---a phrase my mother uttered frequently as a way of absolving herself of responsibility. By today’s standards I would have been labeled with attention deficit disorder, a hyperactive child born with some adrenal problem that made her more prone to rough-and-tumble play than was normal for a girl. Fortunately I was born fifty years ago and simply called “busy” and “bossy,” the possessor of an Irish temper.” (page 2)

The manual labor that Cathy is assigned at the store is to accompany the driver, Roy, as he delivers to the near and far reaches of the county; Cathy reads the map and provides the directions as Roy drives and at first, she doesn’t realize that he can’t read. Their deliveries take them to the Tuscarora Indian reservation and to Marilyn Monroe on the set of the filming of the movie “Niagara” where she comes to the door of her trailer in nothing more than a slip. The vignettes about their travels together are touching and hilarious.

Among the other stories remembered by the author are her experiences in the Catholic grammar school, where her behavior eventually leads to her expulsion, once again, hysterical. She struggles with her faith as she tries to live up to the standards set by Mother Agnese and the other sisters and Father Flanagan, the pastor who enjoys tipping a few.

The Cisco Kid, Elvis, Queen for a Day, John Cameron Swayzee, Sen. Joe McCarthy, Ed Sullivan….If the siren song of nostalgia sings to you, this book is right up your alley. Beautifully written, loaded with quirky characters and bound to make you smile this book is highly recommended. show less

Reads as fiction rather than memoir; the author is trying to be some kind of Tom Sawyer (but with more freedom) or Huck Finn, with Roy as a mentor -- Roy is what Jim could have been in a happier world. And the book works as long as Roy is on the scene, but at some time sooner or later -- one of the things about any book, memoir or fiction, that a good editor or fact checker should watch for is internal contradictions in the timeline -- Roy disappears and the narrative suffers for it. In the last two chapters, the tone changes. In the penultimate chapter, with Roy out of the picture, junior-high aged Catherine latches onto a malicious and salacious older girl, Miranda, who orchestrates a vicious although implausible prank against the show more parish priest that gets both girls expelled, and in the last chapter which again stretches the bounds of credulity Miranda savages the reputation of a young Jesuit, who might even deserve it if half Gildiner's narrative is true, which I doubt. He supposedly lacks judgement to the point of taking prepubescent Catherine out for dining and dancing at a fancy hotel -- straight from school in her kneesocks and saddle shoes -- where, mistaken for newlyweds, he gets her drunk and shares a dangerous escapade at the brink of the falls. Too Close is a light hearted and heartwarming book with two nasty, mean-spirited chapters appended; I won't be keeping it.

The author's problems with veracity, according to the Buffalo News, only get worse in later books, when she claims to have written, while stoned, an essay that won her a scholarship to Oxford -- where she entered a college that did not, at any of the possible times in her mangled timeline, accept women. And on and on. There's a tactfully delightful review on Amazon by Susan McMackin Reynolds, a schoolmate and neighbour from Lewiston, that's worth reading (https://www.amazon.com/Too-Close-Falls-Catherine-Gildiner/dp/0007152833), along with the Buffalo review (update: in 2025, the Buffalo News article is behind a paywall). show less

Now that I've read this book I realize that I don't have a hope of writing a best-selling memoir of my childhood. My parents were just not eccentric enough to give me the fodder for writing an interesting book. Some of the best childhood memoirs I have read are this one, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Wells and Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. What they all have in common are parents who live outside the norm for their time and location. Bernice and Jim, you deprived me of my chance at fame by raising me in an ordinary 1950s farming community and living ordinary lives. Even my mother going to back to work when I was young, although as I was just learning to talk and the trauma of being separated from her caused me to develop a stutter, show more just wasn't unusual enough. Or maybe I just lack the imagination to embellish incidents from my childhood with enough verve to make them interesting. I do suspect a little of that was done by the author.

Cathy McClure was the daughter of a pharmacist and an amateur historian who lived in Lewiston New York in the 1950s. Her parents were childless for some time and Cathy was a bit of a surprise. She was also a handful. In the 21st century Cathy would have been diagnosed as having hyperactivity or ADHD and been treated with pharmaceuticals. In the 1950s the family doctor suggested Cathy be put to work in the family drugstore so at age 4 she started work at 6 am when her father went to work. She sold newspapers, sorted pills, filled the magazine racks and went out on deliveries with Roy. Roy was illiterate but he knew everyone and where they lived; Cathy could already read and write at age 4 so she looked at all the prescriptions and figured out the delivery route. Even when Cathy started school she still went into the drugstore before and after school. The McClures never ate at home so Cathy had breakfast in a diner with her father on the way to work, lunch in a tavern with Roy while they were out delivering and supper with her mother in a better class restaurant. When she had to see a child psychologist for stabbing another pupil at school and he showed her a picture of a stove and asked Cathy what her mother would be putting in the oven she answered mittens because that is all she had ever seen her mother do with their stove. (The story of her encounter with the child psychologist is one of the best parts of the book.) My parents insisted on feeding us three meals a day around our dining room table and if we ate away from home it was in someone else's home. I can still remember planning for days with my best friend how we would spend some money we had been given on a sundae. The planning was much better than the execution as I recall.

So, there is no point in waiting for my memoir to be published but if you want an entirely different view of childhood in the 1950s this would be a good place to start. show less

Gildiner is four when she is put to work delivering drugs for her father’s pharmacy in the 50’s. In the book, you meet the fascinating characters who formed part of her life during this period, right up to when she becomes emotionally entangled with a priest in her teens.

One of those memoirs that make you question the veracity of some of the memories, Too Close to the Falls is nevertheless well worth reading. Gildiner knows how to make a reader laugh, knows how to ratchet up the tension, knows how to put a reader right there in the story, awfully close to those Falls.

I identified with this author's rendition of her childhood in that I wasn't ready for the conventions of schooling, I roamed far and wide, and I fell into unacknowledged risks. Her parents struck me as pretty dysfunctional, especially the mother who seemed rather out of touch with reality. Tales of Catholic schooling were genuine and amusing. I would say this story falls in a Memoir Fiction category. Nonetheless, the author came across as very insightful.

I’m really torn on how to write a review on this for one simple reason: this book is labeled and, according to the author, is a memoir. That means non-fiction, truths as told from the memories of the person writing the book. However, as a non-fiction book, it was.. outlandishly unbelievable.

Now, as a fictional book (or a book that is mostly fiction, or non-fiction events taken and made more sensational through fiction), the book was a hoot. I enjoyed it quite a bit! But, even while I was enjoying that book, I was enjoying it as a fictional story because, frankly, it was too unreal to be real.

The author takes many pains to assure her readers of her “elephant-like” memory throughout the book. I got the feeling that she was needing show more us to know this because the stuff in the book was just outlandish. I have no doubt that she met Marilyn Monroe, that she had numerous adventures with Roy (who was one of my favorite characters, by the way), that she hung out at her father’s store – although the whole “working at 4 years old” thing was… yeah, you’re getting the point.

I think what tipped me was two things, and rather than talk directly about them I’ll talk about them in the form of asking a question:

Would you send your pre-teen daughter unsupervised to New York, New York to stay with a strange family and compete in an athletic tournament?
Do you really think a full-grown man (Jesuit) would let a 13 year old girl read, out loud, a full page and a half of one of the steamiest scenes in Lady Chatterly’s Lover – and not do ANYTHING to stop her?
Those two questions were the straw that broke the camels back for me with regards to viewing this book as pure non-fiction. There’s plenty more, but those bugged me the most, and in speaking at length about the book with my book club, we all agreed.
As fiction, the book worked great. As non-fiction, not so much. show less

I read some of the reviews before I read the book. I was ready to be disappointed. This book had a comfortable feel to it. I could relate to a lot of it. Being an only child myself, I had a lot of questions, but unlike Catherine, I did not have the boldness to ask anyone.

This story took place before I was born. I enjoyed the way it gave me a picture and a feel of the way it was back in the 1950`s.

There were times I stopped reading to ask my husband if he remembered something that was being told in the book. Because of this, I learned more about him. Both the book and getting to know my husband, was fascinating.

What I didn`t know about was the way one got their shoes fitted back then. I was sure this was not done, but my husband show more assured me that it was always done that way.

Some readers here have expressed that some of what was written couldn`t possibly be true. Truth is often stranger than fiction. For me, it was very believable. Life was different back then.

If I were to ever write a book, most wouldn`t believe my story.

I enjoyed this book tremendously. The way that Catherine told her story was capturing and made me want to never place the book down.

Great story. I hope to read her next two books. show less