- Paperback: 512 pages
- Publisher: Ecco; Reissue edition (Jun 2 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0061565342
- ISBN-13: 978-0061565342
- Product Dimensions: 20.7 x 14.7 x 3.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 499 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #282,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Oates is not only on her authentically rendered home ground in this sprawling novel set in the city of Niagara Falls during the 1950s, she is also writing at the top of her form. Her febrile prose is especially appropriate to a story as turbulent as the tumultuous waters that have claimed many lives over the years. Widowed 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 leave her and their three children someday. Her unreasonable fear becomes self-fulfilling when her increasingly unstable behavior, combined with Dirk's obsessed but chaste involvement with Nina Olshaker, a young mother who enlists his help in alerting the city fathers to the pestilential conditions in the area later to be known as Love Canal, opens a chasm in their marriage. His gentle heart inspired by a need for justice, Dirk takes on the powerful, corrupt politicians, his former peers and pals, in a disastrous lawsuit that ruins him socially and financially and results in his death. Oates adroitly addresses the material of this "first" class action lawsuit and makes the story fresh and immediate. "In the end, all drama is about family," a character muses, and while the narrative occasionally lapses into melodrama in elucidating this theme, Oates spins a haunting story in which nature and humans are equally rapacious and self-destructive.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
From Oates' fevered imagination comes a sprawling, ambitious novel with enough material to fill several books. The thoroughly absorbing story line tracks 30 years in the life of the Burnabys as they struggle to juggle the competing demands of family and community. After Ariah Erskine's young husband commits suicide on their honeymoon by throwing himself into the roaring waters of Niagara Falls, she forms an intense relationship with local lawyer Dirk Burnaby, marries him two months later, and eventually bears three children. But their marriage founders when Dirk succumbs to the pleading of a local woman whose family has been sickened by their poisoned neighborhood in Love Canal. Dirk, a longtime member of the patrician ruling class, underestimates the lengths to which his colleagues will go to protect their business interests and pays the ultimate price when he faces down the powers-that-be in court. Twenty years later, his sons will take up his cause and mend their broken family in the process. This passionate, compulsively readable novel displays the full range of Oates' singular obsessions--the destructiveness of secrets; eccentric female characters given to rapacious appetites and volatile emotions; and the mysterious way that human emotion is mirrored in the natural world. Vivid and memorable reading from the madly prolific Oates. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
At the time unknown, unnamed, the individual who was to throw himself into the Horseshoe Falls appeared to the gatekeeper of the Goat Island Suspension Bridge at approximately 6:15 A.M. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
At the time unknown, unnamed, the individual who was to throw himself into the Horseshoe Falls appeared to the gatekeeper of the Goat Island Suspension Bridge at approximately 6:15 A.M. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.6 out of 5 stars (89 customer reviews)
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
hard to characterize, Mar 15 2005
By EriKa "E" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Falls (Hardcover)
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.
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Beautiful Niagara Flow, Nov 7 2004
By Janis Rothermel - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Falls (Hardcover)
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.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat disappointing, Sep 16 2005
By Tracy L. - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Falls (Hardcover)
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.
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