Rating: 
Summary: ONE OF THE VERY BEST
Review: One of the very best memoirs I have ever read and I specialize in girlhood memoirs. Born in the same year as the author, I very much enjoyed her recollections of how it was to grow up female in the early fifties. However the writer's childhood was undoubtedly more eccentric and adventurous than mine and probably most of our contemporaries. Her recounting of the wonderful and unique characters she encountered and how they shaped her perceptions of life is both hilarious and deeply affecting. I am truly grateful that she has brought them into my life to entertain and educate me as well. This book ends as she begins her teen years. Should she write a sequel, and I fervently hope she will, I will be first in line to buy it. This book is quite simply a remarkable reading experience!
Rating:
Summary: Vivid memories, exciting times
Review: Shades of Russell Baker's Growing Up--thank goodness for writers like Dr. Gildiner who with such enormous talent bring us back to relive the joys, tears, injustices, delights of childhood--her writing brought me closer to my kids as she refreshed my understanding of how people learn about life and love--I'm waiting for volume II please.
Rating: 
Summary: Superb beginning, but a nosedive at the end...
Review: The author's engaging style and an endearing cast of characters make this one of the best memoirs I've read in a long time. Her family's eccentricities (eating every meal at restaurants, seven days a week) had me laughing aloud at times, while tales of ordinary people struggling with their human frailties make the story especially poignant. The author is skilled in building the reader's sense of righteous indignation over various injustices that occur along the way, often in connection with her religious education. I was so caught up in the book that I recommended it to several friends. Unfortunately, the story line took a nosedive toward the end. The author's reminiscences about the romantic entanglements of a young priest assigned to teach her religion class just don't ring true to me. Perhaps I'm not in the best position to judge this, as I'm not Catholic and did not attend Catholic school, but the idea of a young priest taking a 15-year-old girl on a romantic dinner date and plying her with wine till she gets drunk seems pretty far-fetched to me, especially in that day and age. As the scene played on, I kept expecting to find that it was a dream or daytime reverie, and that the the author would return us eventually to the real world. Even if the story is true, the tone she sets in the previous chapters doesn't prepare the reader for this turn of events. The promise of the book's beginning falls flat, and the ending comes so abruptly that it seems as if she just couldn't figure out any other way to finish up. Nonetheless, she is an extraordinarily talented writer with enchanting stories to tell, embellished or not, and I hope to see new works from her in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Liked the first 250 pages, not the last 100
Review: The first 250 pages of this book cover Catherine Gildiner's unusual childhood. It was pleasing to read a memoire with really nice parents, even if their childraising strategies were bizarre.
But when I got to the parts about Catherine's life age 10 and after, the charming, funny, strange, scenic stories and well-realized characters were replaced with essayistic writing concentrating on her Catholic faith or lack thereof and descriptions of what seemed to me cliched Catholic nuns and priests. I lost interest, but read to the end.
I wish there had been some kind of conclusion drawn, or a wrap up of how her life developed after the last episode, but no such luck. I felt let down.
Oh, well, I was entertained for the better part of a week. What more can you want?
Rating:
Summary: Shades of Angela's Ashes
Review: This book has the same ring of authenticity that made Angela's Ashes such an overwhelming popular success. And the author has the same rare ability to remember and still see her past through the eyes of a child. This precocious and funny book is excellent and will stay with you for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: READ THIS BOOK!
Review: This book was an absolute delight to read. It has the innocence and laugh-out-loud humor of a child's perpective. From the intelligently quirky mother to Warty, the self-appointed caretaker of the city dump, all of the characters ring true. And after just a few sentences Gildiner has you feeling like you really know them. And then there's the main character, the author as a child, who basically grew up in her father's drug store. It's a miracle she lived long enough, given her adventures and attitude, to write the book. Lucky for us she did. Each chapter is a short-story unto itself, a la Jean Shepherd. And there just aren't enough of them. After 350 pages you're left feeling cheated because there aren't 350 more. Read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Life affirming for those who are a little different...
Review: This magical book came into my hands from two separate sources (in the same week--go figure) and has been shared with others since. One friend claims it completely changed her life and promptly went out, bought another 3 copies and passed them along to her friends. If you've ever felt that somehow you were an odd kid, this charming and insightful book is a great way to see challenges strengthen and enhance a woman's character, probably much like it did yours. I want a sequel.
Rating:
Summary: A Delight
Review: What a joy it is to read a book that makes me laugh out loud! I haven't finished the book yet.....I prefer to savour favourite stories to make them last longer. But I can say I'm enjoying this book very much, and keeping my husband awake at night with constant giggles.
Rating:
Summary: Through the eyes of Children
Review: What a world this could be if we spoke our truth as we see it with our child hearts. The clearity of this childs responses caused me to laugh with one sentence and cry with the next. The mixed responses were at the way humans live their "serious" lives with all of their rules and conclusions, clouding their reality with it's true simplisity. This book carries you close to the realization that life looked at, from this young childs view point, could bring one to the level of "The Joy of Happiness".
Rating:
Summary: Bittersweet
Review: What an enticing opportunity, reading what a grade school classmate remembers about a childhood shared. Born in 1948, brainy, skinny, tall, "only children" born to older parents, Cathy and I not only lived a short block apart but had much in common in our childhood in Lewiston. Having survived Sisters Adele and Mother Agnese with Cathy, I looked forward with more than a little interest to reading her memoir, "Too Close to the Falls". I was not surprised to find it written with an authenticity of style that is striking and a voice that kept me turning pages. But memory plays tricks on us and I found some of the book puzzling, although I admit more than a few decades of time may contribute to the haze of memory. And although I was not looking for some rosy view of the Lewiston of old, I did take notice of what was missing. It's truly not an issue of my memories being confined only to the romance of finding arrowheads in the yard, picking up mail at the post office before delivery to homes began, of being an Irish girl learning to polka with the German Fermoile family down the block, or my first kiss in the balcony of the theatre in Niagara Falls. I was hoping that Cathy would not only share more of the sweet and innocent minutia of the small town, not to mention Catholic parish life on the Niagara frontier in the 50s; but would examine those things that when combined, for good or bad, made us the people we are today. I may have been looking for Cathy's explanation of what it was that was imparted to us within those big double doors of Hennepin Hall, which gave us the belief even 40 some years later, that the earth was a good place and a world view that asked us to be more than we are and give more than we got. What was it about our impossible placement for 4th grade, in 2 adjoining rooms in the big white mansion that was Hennepin Hall, taught by the overwrought Sister Adele who spent her days scurrying back and forth while classmates did, as 4th graders will, their best to disrupt whatever room was without a keeper? How was it that the sexist separation on the playground (boys on the west side of the building, girls on the east) taught us something? Instead of tales of our young "assistant" priest with the motorcycle I would have prefered reflections on a church community where on Sundays in July it was so hot that it made the dye Jessie Hanrahan's magenta silk hat run in finger-paint like rivers down her forehead. It could be true that I was looking for a moral of the story or Cathy's psychological insights into how our experiences somehow gelled to give us a sense of community, a sense of right and wrong, an ability to put words together and to draw conclusions and see subtleties and yes, perhaps one can't indeed go home again. While fine as a work of semi-fiction, some details don't hold up under scrutiny to someone who was there. With the mere addition of an introduction much could have been done to explain individuals being combined to create a character, or the addition of a grade 6 that did not exist in reality. In short, I liked what I got, but expected more.
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