Too Close to the Falls

Too Close to the Falls by Catherine Gildiner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gildiner's memoir of her very unusual childhood is vivid and hilarious. From the age of four she worked in her father's drug store in Niagara Falls, NY. Her best friends were the store employees, especially the  delivery man, Roy, with whom she spent hours ferrying medicines to the locals and learning a lot of their secrets.

In her Catholic school the too-smart-for-her-own-good, hyperactive Cathy would try anything except studying. When the boy behind her wouldn't stop pulling her hair out, she stabbed him in the hand, leading to a conversation with a psychiatrist that had me laughing out loud. Her parents obviously worried a lot, but they respected her individuality and provided only the gentlest guidance. Cathy's intellectual mother spent her days reading and researching esoteric subjects. She never cooked a meal or cleaned her own house and had to teach her daughter how to behave when she visited friends whose meals were prepared and eaten at home. This mom deserves a book of her own. (Much about her becomes clearer in the sequel.)

Cathy's unusual upbringing and her uninhibited spirit led to many hilarious incidents, as well as some dangerous moments. All are vividly recounted by the author, a psychologist-turned-writer who created one of the most entertaining reads I've had in a long time. I immediately went on to the sequel, Too Close to the Falls.


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The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

Sandy Tolan's thoroughly researched and documented book reveals the complicated story behind the Israel-Palestine conflict. He puts a face on the history--two faces, actually. Bashir grew up in Ramla, a Palestinian town where his father had built their home (and planted a lemon tree) before the influx of Jewish refugees after World War II. Dalia was one of the newcomers; her parents had emigrated from Bulgaria when she was very young. When Bashir's family and thousand of other Palestinians were forced to leave their villages to make room for the new Israelis, Dalia's parents moved into Bashir's "abandoned" home, while unknown to them, his people marched through the desert to new villages where they started life again with nothing but resentment.

Dalia learns the history of her home almost twenty years later when Bashir, a lawyer (and possibly a terrorist) fighting for his people's "right to return," goes to Ramla to visit the home he lost. When she invites him in and hears his story, Dalia opens the door to a fragile friendship that will last for decades and motivate her to work for peace. She must reconcile her love of Israel with her growing understanding of the price paid by the Palestinians and the reasons for their uprisings. The friendship between Dalia and Bashir offers hope that someday the two nations can live together in peace, but the history Tolan lays out, so full of oppression, tragic mistakes, and ironies, makes it hard to believe there will ever be a happy ending to this story.

As sobering as it is, I highly recommend Tolan's book to anyone who wants to understand the powder keg that is Israel/Palestine today. Your eyes and heart will be opened.