Favorite quote:
"She would become, through the years, a woman who expected the worst, to relieve herself of the anxiety of hope." ( )

This is the third book by Oates I’ve read. Although I don’t believe she can write a bad book, for me “The Falls” was not as powerful as “The Gravedigger’s Daughter” or “We were the Mulvaneys.” It’s the story of Ariah Littrell, the musically gifted but awkward daughter of a preacher from Troy, New York. She marries Gilbert Erskine, seminary student and son of another local preacher. After a disastrous honeymoon night in Niagara Falls (not unlike the one related in Ian McEwan’s “On Chesil Beach”), her husband of less than a day, goes out early in the morning and throws himself into the Horseshoe Falls from Goat Island suspension bridge. It is intimated that part of the problem may be that Gilbert is gay (based on references to his attachment to a fellow seminary student named Douglas or “D”). Bewildered and grief stricken, Ariah compulsively follows the search for Gilbert’s body, and during this time, a local lawyer named Dirk Burnaby watches over Ariah and finds himself inexplicably attracted to her. Soon after she returns to her hometown of Troy, Dirk pays her a visit and, with flowers picked from the side of the road and a couple bottles of champagne, he proposes to her and she accepts. The book next depicts their early family life and the arrival of three children – Chandler, Royall, and Juliet. Chandler is born after less than a year and it is always unclear whose son he is – although he would be unlikely to be Gilbert’s based on the description of the honeymoon night encounter. Dirk is pursued by a woman (Nina Olshaker) from the “Colvin Heights” subdivision of east Niagara Falls where black oozing sludge and foul odors are associated with chronic illnesses and various types of cancer among the residents and their children. She convinces him to bring a lawsuit against the city and “Swann Chemicals.” Thus, in 1962, Dirk becomes involved in what ultimately would become the Love Canal case – the infamous real-life environmental contamination of the area by 20,000 tons of dumped toxic waste with a school constructed on the site. In the novel, Dirk’s case is dismissed. He loses his temper in court and punches the court baliff. Not long after, he’s run off the road and into the Niagara River by a mysterious truck and police cruiser. Much of the novel details Ariah raising her children as a widow and refusing to talk about Dirk. She had thrown him out of the house during the trial preparations, convinced he was having an affair with Nina Olshaker. The kids are left to piece together a picture of their father (only Chandler is old enough to remember him). Fifteen years later, the Love Canal case is reopened (coinciding now with actual history) and a memorial service is held for Dirk Burnaby celebrating his early attempt to bring justice to the residents of “Colvin Heights.” His children and Ariah attend the service and enjoy some closure. ( )

Joyce Carol Oates expertly takes cultural icons and important events and builds novels around them that seem vividly real--as they could very well be.

The Falls is actually several stories all wrapped into one novel. First, we meet Ariah Erksine, a newlywed whose husband commits suicide the morning after their wedding night by getting up early, racing to the falls, and plunging in. This is the strange event that gets the novel going. JCO is very good at this; many of her novels begin with events that are very strange and very tragic, but they are always believable when they roll off her pen.

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. ( )

Great 1950's "film noir" fiction. ( )

I didn't like the writing style at all in this book. I've enjoyed other books of hers, but not this one. I found it repetitive and didn't enjoy most of the characters. ( )