Catherine Gildiner

Best-selling Author and Psychologist

Book Review, “After the Falls”, Montreal Gazette

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Susan Schwartz, Montreal Gazette masthead
A smart, nervy teen comes of age; Catherine Gildiner looks back on her not-so-typical life

Montreal Gazette
Sat Oct 10 2009
Page: H6
Section: Weekend: Books
Byline: SUSAN SCHWARTZ
Source: The Gazette

She did such outrageous things as a teenager – like take the family car when she was only 13 to meet friends at the local pizza joint and, a few years later, get herself hired as a short-order cook at a Howard Johnson’s even though she didn’t know how to cook – that several times while reading Catherine McClure Gildiner’s memoir about coming of age in the 1960s, I laughed out loud, the way I would at Lucy Ricardo’s antics on I Love Lucy.

The young woman we meet in After the Falls is sassy and cocksure, absolutely. But the book is more than simply funny and Gildiner, then Cathy McClure, is not just outrageous. She is smart and caring, determined and enterprising, curious and brave. And some of the tales she tells are nothing short of harrowing stories in which sex, infidelity, even murder, figure.

Gildiner came of age in the United States at a time defined by the Vietnam War, by civil rights demonstrations and by the death of Martin Luther King – and readers see the time through the prism of her experience. “We all lost people in Vietnam,” she said in an interview. “We all knew people who were maimed.”
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Hollywood Twinkle Interview

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Hollywood Twinkle interview photoProduction Notes: Catherine Gildiner

I had the great pleasure of interviewing New York Times best-selling author, Catherine Gildiner, regarding her book, After the Falls: Coming of Age in the Sixties. To know Gildiner is to love her…rather – to read Gildiner is to be an instant fan and addict.

I read her first tome, Too Close to the Falls, a memoir of her childhood in Lewiston, New York, and simply could not put it down.  I will never look at a holy water font or a compass quite the same way again.  I fell in love with the little girl – her spunk, her wit, her courage, her intelligence and precocity.

After the Falls is the story of her life ages 13-21 with no less wit, humor, or fun.  Things are just a bit more serious, but no less amusing.  (I dare you to find a white lawn jockey – I did!)

–Sophia Smith

Read interview here.

Podcast: BlogTalkRadio, “Who You Calling Old?”

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blog talk radio "who you calling old" program mastheadJoin us as we talk with author Catherine Gildiner who at age 12 moved with her family from her Niagara Falls home to a Buffalo suburb, leaving behind a family business, small town contentment, and the rebellious childhood chronicled in her first memoir, Too Close to the Falls. While her uprooted parents struggle to adjust, Gildiner stumbles in making new friends and edging into puberty. Her restlessness and a fundamentally outspoken and argumentative nature regularly catapult her further than simple teenage trouble, and she frequently fails at the standard American girlhood, often with comic results. The conflicts between the narrator’s individuality and conformity propel her into her first relationship at the same time that the seismic shifts in American society, culture, and politics hit home with ever-increasing force. Tune in as she talks with us about her life and the experience of living in the sixties.

Book Review: “After the Falls”, Welland Tribune

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welland tribune masthead
– GEORGE DUMA/For The Tribune, Friday, December 18, 2009

PORT COLBORNE – Catherine Gildiner is pretty much an adopted local.

The Toronto-based author was born in Lewiston, N.Y., in 1948, raised in Niagara Falls, N.Y., then spent her teen years and early 20s in Amherst, just outside of Buffalo.

During all that time, she spent 13 summers at Wainfleet’s Long Beach.

On Thursday, Gildiner was the fourth author to grace the Roselawn Centre stage during this season’s Canadian Authors’ Series. It was her third time here during the past seven years. This time she was reading from her latest autobiographical novel, After The Falls.

The book is a sequel to her first novel, Too Close To The Falls, which chronicled her life from the ages of four to her early teens and which was the focus of Gildiner’s first visit to Roselawn. She has also been in town to read from her novel, Seduction, which looked at Charles Darwin’s influence on Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.

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Catherine Gildiner Author

1 years ago

Catherine Gildiner Author

I've been in a writing frenzy of late. I have finally submitted my book about psychological heroes to my agent. It used to be named STILL STANDING, but that has changed to GOOD MORNING, MONSTER, (how one client's mother greeted her every morning.) I've changed the book to include my history as a psychologist and what I learned over the years.

Now I am working on another book about the Underground Railroad yet untitled. I grew up in Lewiston, New York which was the last stop on the underground railroad as it is on the border of Canada. I lived around the houses that had 3 fake basements where the slaves were hidden and my relatives were part of the underground railroad. All this local history fired my imagination as a child and I am writing like a wild woman now. Hope it works. ...

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Catherine Gildiner Author

3 years ago

Catherine Gildiner Author

I'm pretty excited about the new book I'm writing. Just finished the 2nd draft. It is tentatively entitled STILL STANDING: PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILES IN HEROISM. I was a psychologist for 25 years before I was a writer. I am writing about patients I've had over the years who have been abused in one way or another but maintained their sanity. The book came about because I was fed up with how our society defines heroism. Heroes get a medal for short bursts of testosterone. They are measured in short term. I think it should be measured over time. What about patients who have mostly been prisoners of war in homes that have brainwashed and tortured them. They were tiny children who had to fight every day of their lives in cruel homes just to maintain their sanity. These people were brave for decades till they could get out. Then they had to learn how to live in the world. The book is a tribute to the patients I had in therapy who made it. ...

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Catherine Gildiner Author

3 years ago

Catherine Gildiner Author

Ok so who is going to be in Florida in December or who do you know who will be there? I am going to be speaking at The bookstore, BOOKS AND BOOKS in Coral Gables. So whoever lives in Miami come on out on December 8th. Also I am in Palm Beach at the Society for the Four Arts on December 10th. See below. Both events are free! ...

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