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Fiction. HTML: A man climbs over the railings and plunges into Niagara Falls. A newlywed, he has left behind his wife, Ariah Erskine, in the honeymoon suite the morning after their wedding. "The Widow Bride of The Falls", as Ariah comes to be known, begins a relentless, seven day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found. At her side throughout, confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby is unexpectedly transfixed by the otherworldly gaze of this plain, strange woman, falling in love with her though they barely exchange a word. What follows is their passionate love affair, marriage, children, and a seemingly perfect existence. But the tragedy by which their life together began shadows them, damaging their idyll with distrust, greed, and even murder. What unfurls is a drama of parents and their children; of secrets and sins; of lawsuits, murder, and eventually redemption..… (more)
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The Falls is actually several stories all wrapped into one novel. First, we meet Ariah Erksine, a newlywed whose husband commits suicide the morning
The second strange event is that Dirk Burnaby, a lawyer friend of the local entrepreneur who happens to own the hotel at which Ariah is staying, and a rich, highly eligible bachelor, falls in love with Ariah while she keeps her eccentric, week-long vigil by the falls, until rescue crews find her husband's corpse. She becomes known as The Widow Bride of the Falls, and winds up marrying Burnaby a short time later, a man she barely knows. He's persuasive.
The two of them have a very passionate relationship and three children, before Dirk Burnaby becomes engrossed in the first Love Canal Case--this is 1962. Here, JCO provides a short history of the Love Canal tragedy that is both succinct and riveting, though she does change the names. I've googled enough to know that the basic facts are correct. This case was never resolved until 1978, and Burnably did not live to see it. On the contrary, his life was ruined because he took this case.
The latter part of the book follows his children, their relationship with their strange, damaged mother, and how each of them play a part in discovering a part of their father's past, despite their mother's determined silence. This is a family history that takes place in the wake of the famous Niagara Falls, and I found it quite poignant.
I became quite involved with this novel, and liked most of the principal characters. Though long, at 481 pages, it went by rather quickly, and I would gladly recommend it to most people.
“The most treacherous corner of
“Maybe that’s the promise of The Falls? The secret?”
Sorry that quote was so long – but there’s no place to stop once you fall under the spell of those words. I’ve never been to Niagara Falls – but after reading that part, I find myself mentally forcing myself away from the edge, psychically wiping drops of heavily churned water from my skin. I am there, I feel the sounds, and my eyes are drawn into the massive amounts of water and spray and sheer force.
Whenever Oates takes us back to the falls – my interest is piqued once again. During the rest of the book, as we meet damaged character after damaged character…my interest wanes. As I have said before (and will no doubt say many times again), my fatal flaw as a reader is that I have to feel some connection to at least one of the characters in the book to really want to keep reading the book. None of the (human) characters in this book connected with me.
I did feel sympathy and interest for Ariah, “The Widow Bride of the Falls” until her character abruptly changed, or manifested itself. The idea that a groom, one day after marrying, would throw himself into Niagara Falls is quite a hook. Ariah’s feelings about this event were compelling, to say the least. But once her life takes a more conventional turn, she seems to be a different person. Instead of sympathy, I started to feel revulsion.
Which is fine… So then we enter the minds of other characters, her second husband, her children… These people have so many problems, so much despair, and seem unable to relate to their lives, their world. Maybe Oates takes us too far into their minds, into the deepest, darkest parts of their soul, where things live that no one wants to even think about, let alone talk about. Maybe I ended up knowing too much about them to connect to them.
Again, this is fine…for some readers. Oates brings forth some real truths – some we may not want to acknowledge – but ones that exist, nonetheless.
“You yearn to hurt them sometimes. Those who love you too much.”
And there’s another quote (which I now an unable to find for the life of me) that says something like “the world is torn between those who fight to be loved more and those who fight to be loved less”. This book contains multiple examples of this – inappropriate loves, shameful loves, unforgiving loves, doomed loves…
All worthy of examination…but maybe I just don’t have the stomach for such a process. Oates is such a descriptive and evocative writer…I just don’t think I am eager to see the world she describes or handle the emotions she evokes.
anecdote time: I needed to buy a Christmas gift for my sister so I picked this book up at the last minute at a Borders Express at the mall. Turned out my sister bought it for me as well (probably because
I liked the beginning, and the ending, but the middle really dragged. It seemed very flabby and rambling.
The characters were odd, but had that touch of reality, so you could believe in them. Looking back at the
Not sure I cared for the introduction of Love Canal. Once that part of the book started the reading doldrums set in.
There was a lot of symbolism with the falls and the river, and life, but ho hum, it too didn't really do anything to interest or entertain.
I loved the first part which peaked for
I know I'm simplifying here and there are threads that tie the book together (moreover, real life is not one pretty bundled package!), but this is my impression, and the themes that did recur throughout, like the ominous nature of Niagara Falls, seemed forced particularly in the later chapters.
Quotes:
On marriage:
"Two trembling young people at the altar being blessed like cattle about to be slaughtered by a common butcher. Bonded by terror yet strangely oblivious of each other."
"Not jus the women have domesticated us for their own purposes, they make us feel guilty as hell when the domestication doesn't take."
"They surprised each other less often in their lovemaking. There must have been a day, an hour, when they made love during the daytime for the final time; when they made love impulsively somewhere other than their big, comfortable bed for the final time..."
"Was this the basic principle of domestic life, of the terrible need to propagate one's kind? The human wish, as in a fairy tale, to live longer than one's lifetime, through one's children. To live longer than one is allotted, and to matter. To matter deeply, profoundly to someone."
"Royall said, disgusted, 'Christ's sake, Mom! If I wanted a 'sweet' wife I'd marry a chocolate bunny. I'd go to bed with fucking Fannie Farmer.'"
On suicide:
"As Dirk Burnaby once said, you had to have a deep, mysterious soul to want to destroy yourself. The shallower you are, the safer."
On death:
"The cemetery, Royall decided, was like a city. It continued the injustice of the city and of life. Most of the grave markers were ordinary stone, weather-worn and soiled with bird lime, while others were more expensive, larger, made of granite or marble with shiny engraved facades."
On the 50's:
"It was 1950 and everyone was pregnant."
And on the Love Canal:
"Women having miscarriages, babies born with bad hearts, missing parts of their colons, you ascribe to more 'congenital deficiencies.' When the state finally ordered blood tests for the Love Canal residents, finally in 1971, in the Armory, people were asked to come at 8 A.M. and waited all day, and at 5 P.M. half were still waiting. There was a 'needle shortage.' 'Nurse shortage.' Three hundred blood samples were 'contaminated.' Lab results were 'inconclusive' - 'misfiled'. Some of us have been criticized for suggesting these doctors are not much different from the Nazi doctors doing experiments on human beings, but I hold to that charge."
"The Falls," is the story of a family who lives in Niagra Falls and experiences the trials and traumas of ordinary, disfunction; as well as the political history that blankets their town. It's a history of the Falls, too, and a history of what created the Love Canal...the poisonous run-off of radioactive chemicals that made such a turmoil that the American side of the Falls was split from the Canadian side.
I've visited the Falls, and the contrast between the Love Canal side and the other is like visiting a ghost town or ghetto to a city in a garden state. Strange and decidedly a warning of things possible with chemical poisoning of waters by big business.
The storyline of this novel is engaging, to say the least, and the tension between family members and lovers is keenly felt as you read.
I highly recommend "The Falls" to everyone!
Fiction
A woman wakes up on the first day of her honeymoon, a widow. One of the darkest ladies of letters strikes again. The real protagonist of this meandering hell is Niagara Falls. Oates captures everything about the falls in her prose and effectively transports the
Recommended by Geo, July 2005
This is going to be on my almost favorites list because while I likely won't read it again, it was a great read & will have me reflecting upon its characters for years. Also, I'm a sucker for a Niagara Falls setting. I think this was the first novel I've read of Joyce Carol Oates & I have to say that I very much liked it.