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Joyce Carol Oates wears me out and this book is no exception. Not only is this this the same Oatsian theme as always, a relatively happy family - none of her families are without problems to begin with - is destroyed by a catastrophic event, but it's set in upstate New York, which is not exactly Thomas Hardy's Wessex. (There is a slight parallel here, though; just as the woods have some protagonism in "The Woodlanders", Niagara Falls exerts a strong influence in this novel.) All of the typical O...
SynopsisWidowed on her wedding night when her new husband, a young minister and latent homosexual, throws himself into the falls, Ariah Littrell, the plain, awkward daughter of a minister, henceforth considers herself damned. Her bleak future becomes miraculously bright when Dirk Burnaby, a handsome, wealthy bon vivant with an altruistic heart, falls in love with the media-dubbed Widow-Bride. Their rapturous happiness is shadowed only by Ariah's illogical conviction over the years that Dirk will...
This book was given to me as a gift, otherwise I would have never had it in my home, especially after reading "We Were the Mulvaneys" which I found to be an equally horrible read. I felt a little compelled to read this because it is set in the Niagra area, where I have visited many times.There are two main problems with this book, and they permeate the book unfortunately. The first is that Oates' characters are not in any way genuine. Their reactions, motivations, what they say and do all ring f...
NEW REVIEW:I'll say that this sat with me well enough that I can give it a 4 star rating. It was really good and it was the second JCO book I've ever read. It may not be her best, but it is a strong novel. Take yet another 4 stars from me, JCO.I am giving this one a 4 out of 5 stars. OLD REVIEW:This was good, but after ADORING "We Were the Mulvaneys" by Joyce Carol Oates, I wanted this one to be a bit better than it was. I was really close at one point to giving this a 4 out of 5 stars. The begi...
The terrible, wonderful appeal of a raging waterfall: you can cross above it, brave acrobat... you can lose yourself in it, angst and sadness begone, your body falling into something greater than the cares that weigh you down... you can wait beside it, a spectral vision of mourning and tragedy, a local icon for tourists to gape at, waiting for that body, waiting for the falls to rebirth its lonely suicide as it always eventually will... you can live next to it, next to its tamer parts, the water...
I read The Falls for book club. I was looking forward to reading it, given its roots in historical events and my past reading of her novel, We Were the Mulvaneys. The Falls was, hands down, the worst novel I have read for years. If I could, I would give it 1/4 of a star. The first few hundred pages are horrid: adjective after adjective describing nothing. The characters are boring, generally unbelievable, and have no depth. To her credit, Joyce Carol Oates offers the reader moments of promise: d...
The Falls was my first ever Joyce Carol Oates novel. I've read a few of her stories over the years, though none of them particularly stand out in my mind. I have vague but admiring memories of what is probably her most famous short story, frequently anthologized, called "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" I know she's considered something of an icon in the fiction world, so I took that into this experience, expecting what's generally called "literary fiction," and expecting it to be well...
Joyce Carol Oates has become quite a name in the fiction world. I thought it was high time that I read one of her works. Unfortunately, my first foray was The Falls. Neither the characters, plot, nor writing left me particularly enthralled. Nevertheless it was a readable novel, something to occupy my time. The main character is Ariah who becomes a widow on her honeymoon when her husband commits suicide by jumping in to Niagara Falls. Through this misfortune another man becomes obsessed with her....
This was such a wonderful book-- I loved how Oates wrapped the Love Canal story into the lives of these characters. The book is told during three time periods-- my favorite is the first but taken as a whole, it was still a rewarding read.
My first JCO book and possibly my last. Some great ideas and stunning imagery, but The Falls got on my nerves pretty fast. Oates' pen tends to linger for pages (and pages and pages)on events that other writers would condense into one or two sentences. In particular, the play-by-play on hotel staff handling a woman whose husband just threw himself into Niagara Falls was excruciating. That Oates intermittently punctuates her descriptions by italicizing the mostly cliched inner thoughts of her char...
The woman in black intrigues me. When I read The Falls, I thought she was Nina Olshaker, recognizing Dirk in Royall, making love to Royall as she had not been able to do with his father. On the other hand, the scene in the cemetery is eerie and unreal enough to make a case for her being a phantom. Her diction reminded me of Claudine, but Claudine would have been much older and never would have worn those clothes, and her hair was blond, not black, and she was always impeccably coiffed and never
