Customer Reviews

The Falls: A Novel

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

If I have learned anything in my recent and voracious reading of Joyce Carol Oates's exhaustive library of works, it is not only that she is a prolific writer but one of elegant prose and expertly woven stories. She manages gripping detail, driving the reader on to find out what's next, even when there is nothing really happening. The spellbinding nature of The Falls (Niagara Falls itself) is clearly illustrated, but what of the supposedly spellbinding nature of the main character of this novel, Ariah? I was not able to see what Dirk, the wealthy playboy who falls in love with and marries Ariah after she is widowed, sees in her. Maybe that is part of the overarching mystery. The story has a strange beginning-staged, unhappy marriage ended on the wedding night by suicide, which extends into an unconventional and fortuitous marriage for the so-called Widow Bride, Ariah. Despite the complexity and unstable nature of Ariah's character (and her belief that Dirk would somehow leave her sooner or later) I also don't see the logical progression of other aspects of her character... how did she change to become the woman she became? Was it wealth? Was it the attentions of Dirk, whom so many others had failed to capture? In any case, the grace and elegance of the story almost makes you forget that there is very little happening for long stretches of this book.

This is one of my top books this year. I loved the story(ies), the characters and the setting. Ms. Oates characters are beautifully defined with enough room to form one's own mind with persoanl fill in here and there. I could see these characters. I often felt like I was in the room with them (behind a curtain, of course). It is a terrific saga with hidden innuendos and opinions that the reader learns about in its appropriate time. I learned a lot about the Niagara Falls area. Having been a visitor there once, it expanded my own idea of the place-its history, socio-economics, its evolution from an old, grand tourist destination to a modern one and the environs. I learned about struggle. I was reminded that often where we sometimes believe someone's heart is, is not really where it is at all. I was reminded that one's life can change in a flash, not only one's circumstances, but one's entire belief system. And again, how quickly it will or can change again. And through it all am reminded how humans cope, and how differently they cope. The struggles, the triumphs, the pain, the joy were all here. I liked every one of these characters. I felt like I knew each one, and in fact wanted to know each one. Ms.Oates led the pace of the story well. Her ending was appropriate and left room for more. I highly recommend this book, and am delighted that Ms. Oates is a premiere American writer who I know I can look forward to reading more of her works in the years ahead. Thank you, Ms. Oates for a great book, well written and so well crafted.

I enjoyed about 80% of this book and feel it is only worthy of a three star review. I found the story interesting, compelling and plausible, up until Royall meets the "Woman in Black" in the cemetery. I felt the author made fools out of her readers with this scene. It's as if she could not find a way to reconnect Dirk and what happened to him to his family, and chose to come up with what I believe is a completely unrealistic way (in what was otherwise a very realistic story) in which to do it. As I was reading this portion of the book, my only response to it was "WHAT?!?" Or, maybe she decided she had to throw some sex back into the book since there hadn't been any in a while. I'm not sure, but it completely soured me on the rest of the book.

I felt the book's ending a bit unsatisfactory - far to many questions left unanswered. This was my second book by this author and might just be my last.

Niagara Falls and its many cataracts (Horseshoe Falls as in this novel, for one) has always been an easy target for those who feel there is no way out but suicide. And in Joyce Carol Oates new novel, "The Falls" it is Gilbert, husband of Ariah who does just that. The gatekeeper of Horseshoe Falls says of the Falls' mesmerizing attraction: "Like we're sick of ourselves. Mankind...this is the way out."
After the suicide of her husband, Gilbert, Ariah feels that her life is doomed. This is the 1950's in a small American town and she is looked at as the cause rather than the victim. Then she meets Dirk Burnaby, a lawyer (called "the Savior) involved with the victims of the Love Canal: a place filled with air that pollutes and kills and obviously represents all that is wrong with humanity...it's a wellspring of moral and physical decay. Burnaby is head-over-heels in love with Ariah and at first he only watches while she mourns: "He wanted to stand close behind her...and put his arms around her. He wanted for himself this ferocity of attention, this loyalty. He couldn't believe that Erskine deserved it. He hated the man, detested him, that, though dead, he should captivate the woman...So deeply in love with Ariah, he could barely see any longer; as one is unable to see one's own mirror reflection, pushed too close..."
Oates is after something different here and she uses the Love Canal disaster as a backdrop to track the Burnaby Family and her keen sense of the psychological makeup of character and her brilliant sense of social and familial mores makes "The Falls" a major work in the Oates canon. She uses all of her powers here: the facility with the family and its politics (Mulvaneys), her use of violence and degradation ("I'll Take You There") and her sense of the Gothic (The Barrens).
Anyone who has stood in a crevice of one of the cataracts of the Niagara Falls can identify with what Oates writes about that ethereal feeling: "Here, your veins, arteries, the minute precision and perfection of your nerves will be unstrung in an instant."
With this novel, Oates is at the zenith of her writing powers and not only is her prose fat, juicy and unbelievably gorgeous, it is also both lyrical and forceful. In "The Falls," she's after the recreation of Life, of Love and most importantly of Hope and inevitably, Redemption.

I think Joyce Carol Oates writes better when she writes less. "The Falls," though exhilarating at times, marches in a winded rhythm of arduous writing. Intended, perhaps, and likely the attempt from Oates to pen a narrative aloof and strained as its characters. Perhaps that is what some of the story is about, the rhythm of these people's lives interacting within such an exhilarating setting--that the characters become the narrative, and demand the reader to accept that limitation. A better example at this type of writing is Oates's grand book, "Black Water." In that book the prose is so tightly woven that the main character does not pierce away from the fabric of the story...her drowning and her mixed up love life. In "The Falls," I felt at times the story itself could have been a different story within the other character's dimensions. Although, I enjoyed Oate's remarkable descriptions and insight into the characters. "The Falls" is just overwritten and too long. The story could have been more effective if it were 150 pages less.

I'll dispense with the summary of the story - the other reviews have covered that in detail already. What works about this novel is how Oates creates frail, unusual characters that we believe in and we care about, and that's enough to carry the story a long way. But ultimately, there are too many main characters and too many individual conflicts for any one to stand out and pull us over the falls to a satisfying or heartbreaking ending. The book peters out in the end rather than rising to a thunderous crescendo.

You know...I hate book critics, and yet here I sort of am acting like one. I also think that if something nice can't be said, then... So here I sit slamming my favorite writer yet again on Amazon, while in a few days I'll be in the same room with her, owning the unique privilege of hearing her speak on the art of writing, counting the seconds till I am there. There has to be a dank place in literary Hell for someone who'd do that to a writer she claims to idolize, huh?

It's simply that I always try to be objective, and while I love this woman's work, own virtually all of it in hardcover and paperback both, and get excited each time she releases a book, in fairness, this novel, which starts well (if slowly) after a honeymooning groom's suicide at Niagara Falls, comes unglued somewhere near the start of its "lawyer-as-toxic-avenger" subplot, and the nicest thing that can be said is that after that point it never again re-connects to its own storylines. When an Oates novel crashes it disappoints me in a deep down way most writers couldn't do. I don't feel let down as much as I do saddened. I'm also starting to miss the Joyce Carol Oates I've read since I was fourteen, since the Oates of nowadays writes nothing like the Oates of 1960's to the 2000's. Yeah, I know, I'm being judgmental and these are her books, not mine.

Should I actually review this book now? What the heck.

I've found myself thinking over and over in this decade as I read an Oates novel, "Gee, this would have made one heck of a fine short story." Ditto for this one. The Falls is almost falsely billed as something it is not. It seems from its cover and the description inside that it is another Oatesan psycho-dramatic masterpiece with modern-Gothic overtones, but it is in actuality a dull study of a financially-unburdened liberal family in the second third of the last century, conflicting and taking a stand on environmental issues. Oates' prose seems as misapplied as her plot. Where on dozens of past occasions I've seen it all but lift off the page in its ethereal genius, here it was heavy as lead and also somehow silly in a place or two. (A sex scene wherein Oates takes a moment to dwell on the fact both parties have ten toes? Come ON.) This isn't Oates' worst novel, or even her worst novel of the 2000's, but when her entire career is examined, it lies snugly toward the rear of the pack.

And I was truly hoping this one would be great.

I couldn't stop reading this one.

Oates is the kins of author who can get into the innermost feelings of her characters, as no other authr can; she explores the hidden aspects of personality and meakes her reader think deeply about what he or she is reading. In all the years I've been reading JCO, no other book (except maybe Foxfire) has touched me as deeply as The Falls has. Right from the first page, the reader is sucked in (no pun intended). Like the waterfalls, around which this book is centered, this book has a magnetic effect.

In 1950, Ariah, a newlywed, goes on honeymoon with her husband to Niagara Falls. While there, Gilbert Erskine throws himself into The Falls. While searching for the body, Ariah meets Dick Burnaby, a locally well-known lawyer, who she falls in love with and marries. Together they have three children.

By 1962, however, things change. Dick becomes wrapped up in a lawsuit involving a young woman and the death of her dauther due to radiation poisoning. He becomes so deeply involved, in fact, that he ends up ruining his professional reputation, as well as his marriage. How the details of a case, combined with the characters Joyce Carol Oates presents to her readers are only a small part of this fine, wonderful book.

At the beginning of this novel we are introduced to Ariah Erskine who is an intensely creative and complex individual. She is nonetheless very naive and is led into a marriage because she thinks it will enhance her own self worth. When the marriage ends abruptly during the couple's honeymoon to Niagara Falls in the first few pages of this novel she suddenly becomes a hapless victim and she believes herself to be damned. In actuality the reason for her husband's death has nothing to do with her personally, yet the guilt is still affixed to her and she feels that she has failed him. The shadow of that naive personality is turned into a local legend known as "The Widow Bride of the Falls". But the spirited individual remains and she is in a sense brought back to life by a charismatic, well-known member of the community called Dirk Burnaby. The two decide to forge a life for themselves despite Ariah's humble background and Dirk's influential, wealthy family. Although they are successful at first, submerged problems well up causing difficulties. When Dirk becomes involved with an enormously contentious community problem, it threatens the safety of their beloved family and extremely difficult choices need to be made. A powerful question arises: Where does personal sacrifice end in the pursuit of justice?

Oates used the historical Love Canal incident as a reference point in this novel. If you aren't already familiar with the case, it's useful to know that the Love Canal was a neighborhood near the city of Niagara Falls that was built upon a severely polluted landfill. The families who lived in this community suffered terribly for almost three decades because they were lied to from officials, could not afford to move away and had their cases dismissed by the justice system. Only in 1978 were they able to receive some compensation for their suffering. By this point, many of the victims were dead or had contracted severely debilitating medical conditions. Oates' fictional character Dick Burnaby becomes heavily involved in the controversy surrounding this case. Rather than giving us a full picture of the victims, Oates shows us someone outside the event who has a choice to make a real difference in helping to change it. He is even someone who could be said to have been implicated in the continuation of this disaster through his business associations. With tremendous power and stamina, the author writes in this novel about the ways in which a sense of social responsibility can at times supersede the loyalty one feels to his or her own family, friends and colleagues. Oates wrote a similarly themed novel called Do With Me What You Will which has now been sadly forgotten and I would suggest that anyone who enjoys this novel try to obtain a copy of it. She is able to write with razor sharpness about the complex way our lives become entangled with events we may feel morally ambivalent toward. For all the dark aspects of life that this powerful novel portrays, the will of the individual is shown to dynamically stand in opposition to the inhuman acts of society. The greatest thing this tremendous writer has been able to do throughout her prestigious body of work is give voice to disparate people who have been rendered voiceless. As Oates said in her 1970 National Book Award Acceptance speech "The use of language is all we have to pit against death and silence." This novel speaks far further than the characters and events it contains.

Having read every book Ms. Oates has written, I found this to be no less 'dark' and thought provoking as her writing tends to be. However, finding spelling and grammatical errors virtually every 10 pages completely spoiled the book for me. It was so rampant I found myself editing the book instead of reading it. One would expect the publisher of this book to have edited it properly, given the caliber of the author and the price her audience pays to read her books.