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.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
For 40 years, Joyce Carol Oates has maintained a creative dialogue with the roiling cauldron of contemporary American culture, writing unflinchingly about the oddities that bubble up into the headlines. Beginning with her 1966 classic short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?," which was inspired by the tabloid psychopath known as the "Pied Piper of Tucson," she has been equally at ease creating empathetic fictional portraits of the marginalized (the strong-willed daughter of a migrant worker in her 1967 novel A Garden of Earthly Delights, a serial sex killer in Zombie, 1995) and those anointed with the mixed blessing of fame (the protagonist of Black Water, published in 1992 and based on a Chappaquiddick-like accident; Marilyn Monroe in her 2000 novel Blonde). Oates frequently examines the lives of American families balancing precariously on the edge of social, financial or psychological ruin (in her 2001 novel We Were the Mulvaneys, an "ideal" American family deteriorates after the teenage daughter is raped).In her hypnotic new novel, The Falls, Oates juxtaposes a majestic and dangerous natural phenomenon -- the Falls at Niagara -- with a man-made monstrosity, the deadly witches' brew of nuclear and toxic waste known as Love Canal -- as the threatening elements underlying a family saga of self-destruction and redemption.As Oates points out in her front matter, the nation's honeymoon capital has a dark side: In the Victorian era the Falls -- the American, the Bridal Veil and the Horseshoe -- were thought to exert an uncanny, malevolent and hypnotic spell, luring their victims to throw themselves in. By 1900 Niagara Falls had become a "Suicide's Paradise."The novel begins at 6:15 a.m. on June 12, 1950, when the gatekeeper of the Goat Island Suspension Bridge at Niagara Falls notices a distracted man hurrying by. Suspecting a suicide, the gatekeeper follows but fails to prevent the man from throwing himself into the Horseshoe Falls.Back in the honeymoon suite of a grand 19th-century resort hotel, Ariah, Gilbert Erskine's newlywed wife of 21 hours, awakes to an empty bed, a hangover and a suicide note: "The hurt. The humiliation. The unspeakable shame." Pale, red-haired Ariah is a minister's daughter, sheltered from the ways of the flesh. Her husband, a minister, was equally naive. It is clear that both have been shocked by the physicality of the wedding night. But his disappearance is not a proven suicide for seven suspenseful days and nights. During this week Ariah keeps mum about the note and haunts the area around the Falls, gathering a nascent legendary status as "the Widow-Bride."Dirk Burnaby, a prominent Niagara Falls attorney, finds himself drawn to Ariah in her dramatic distress. He doesn't know why, but Oates gives us a pointed hint by describing his eccentric, narcissistic mother -- Claudine Burnaby, a former Buffalo debutante so grieved at the loss of her attractiveness that she has gone into hiding in the 23-room family estate.Dirk protects Ariah from her parents, who have installed themselves in the hotel to await the outcome of the search for Gilbert, and her in-laws, who insist their son could not have committed suicide. When Gilbert's bloated body rises to the surface several miles below Horseshoe Falls after a week of spinning in the mammoth frothing maelstrom known as the "Devil's Whirlpool," Ariah insists upon identifying him. Then she collapses. Dirk pursues Ariah back to her hometown of Troy, and within a month of her first marriage, they are wed. Later, realizing she is pregnant, Ariah frets about which of her husbands is the father of her firstborn, Chandler. When her second son, Royall, is born, eight years later, there is no doubt of his resemblance to Dirk. Their daughter Juliet is born, and the Burnabys seem the happy prosperous family. But sinister undercurrents at work in the world around them exert a psychic pull on Dirk. Shortly after Juliet's birth, he succumbs once more to the lure of a distraught woman whom he thinks of as "the Woman in Black." He is as obsessed with her as he once was with Ariah, but his focus is professional. Nina Olshaker is a young mother whose daughter has died of leukemia. She suspects that the cause was pollution, the thick smelly muck that oozes up in basements throughout the neighborhood built upon the area once known as Love Canal. Dirk is the only lawyer in town willing to represent her. In pursuit of justice for the "Woman in Black," he alienates family and friends. He loses the case; a week later his car plunges through a guard rail into the Niagara River. His body is never found.Ariah believes she is cursed, that the suicide of her first husband led to the death of the second. Although she shields her children from information about their father, she passes along her anxieties. The family lives in "near destitution," and the youngsters grow up hearing schoolyard taunts, "Burn-a-by! Shame, shame's the name!" The novel, always fast-moving, gathers even more momentum as Ariah's sons reach manhood and begin to explore the mystery of their father's death, and her daughter, a dreamy teenager, hears voices calling her to join her father. To save themselves and their sister, Chandler and Royall must confront the family's deepest secrets.The Falls takes as its historic moment the latter half of the 20th century, when the age of conformity was dissolving into the Vietnam era. Yet it displays the sumptuous detail and breathless narrative of a 19th-century epic. The archetypal images of the Falls, the Devil's Whirlpool, the honeymoon suite, the Widow-Bride and the Woman in Black emphasize its gothic roots. With inimitable virtuosity, Oates weaves the still potent lore of Niagara into her extensive narrative. Using imagery of the river and falls as a driving force, she creates a seamless and engrossing flow that in the end seems natural, inevitable. Once you reach the dread stretch of whitewater rapids in the Niagara River called the Deadline, there is no turning back -- you are committed to going over the Falls. At this point, Oates writes, "You realize that the speed, the propulsion, has nothing to do with you. It is something happening to you." Such is the experience of reading the latest from this bountiful, endlessly curious and increasingly masterful writer. Reviewed by Jane Ciabattari Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Bookmarks Magazine
The Falls reads like a 19th-century epic, with echoes of the gothic. Some critics saw this approach as melodramatic; others called it sublime. Both celebrated and criticized for her prolific output (she has more than 50 books to her name), Oates is well known for probing the psychological depths of her characters, as she did in We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. This novel is no exception. Despite general praise (after all, most of Oates’s works are small masterpieces), the consensus is it’s not her most powerful novel. While the plot may grip some readers, the book will likely appeal to those who enjoy depth of character development, interesting (if, at times, overdone) prose, and a brave, brave ending.In our Book by Book Profile of Joyce Carol Oates in our May/June 2003 issue, Jessica Teisch wrote: “Where to Start: A daunting task, as Oates has been prolific across numerous genres and media. Oates is a master of the short story, and Where are You Going, Where Have You Been? is a collection of some of her best work. For classic Oates, turn to Them. For Oates with a dash of hope, try We Were the Mulvaneys.”Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.


From AudioFile
Anna Fields's skilled voice creates Niagara Falls as a living and unforgiving character, echoing and resonating in this family story. Opening with a startling courtship and marriage, Fields brings the characters and environment to life, building to a crescendo as powerful as the Falls themselves. (It's awesome to realize that a human voice can make so real the men, women, and children of this saga.) Be prepared for emotional moments as the story peaks, ebbs, and peaks again, and love is found in the most surprising places. In the end, you'll feel you know these people and share their sorrows and occasional joys. L.C. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


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


Book Description

A stunning, major achievement from Joyce Carol Oates, "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation). A haunting story of the powerful spell Niagara Falls casts upon two generations of a family, leading to tragedy, love, loss, and, ultimately, redemption.

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 strange, 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, and children -- 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. As Ariah's children learn that their past is enmeshed with a hushed-up scandal involving radioactive waste, they must confront not only their personal history but America's murky past: the despoiling of the landscape, and the corruption and greed of the massive industrial expansion of the 1950s and 1960s.

Set against the mythic-historic backdrop of Niagara Falls, Joyce Carol Oates explores the American family in crisis, but also America itself in the mid-twentieth century. As in We Were the Mulvaneys, a "darkly engrossing novel" (Washington Post Book World), she examines what happens when the richly interwoven relationships of parents and their children are challenged by circumstances outside the family.

The Falls is a love story gone wrong and righted, and it alone places Joyce Carol Oates definitively in the company of the great American novelists.


Download Description
"

A stunning, major achievement from Joyce Carol Oates, ""one of the great artistic forces of our time"" (The Nation). A haunting story of the powerful spell Niagara Falls casts upon two generations of a family, leading to tragedy, love, loss, and, ultimately, redemption.

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 strange, 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, and children -- 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. As Ariah's children learn that their past is enmeshed with a hushed-up scandal involving radioactive waste, they must confront not only their personal history but America's murky past: the despoiling of the landscape, and the corruption and greed of the massive industrial expansion of the 1950s and 1960s.

Set against the mythic-historic backdrop of Niagara Falls, Joyce Carol Oates explores the American family in crisis, but also America itself in the mid-twentieth century. As in We Were the Mulvaneys, a ""darkly engrossing novel"" (Washington Post Book World), she examines what happens when the richly interwoven relationships of parents and their children are challenged by circumstances outside the family.

The Falls is a love story gone wrong and righted, and it alone places Joyce Carol Oates definitively in the company of the great American novelists."


About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In 2003 she received the Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature and the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"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 strange, 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, and children - 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. As Ariah's children learn that their past is enmeshed with a hushed-up scandal involving radioactive waste, they must confront not only their personal history but America's murky past: the despoiling of the landscape, and the corruption and greed of the massive industrial expansion of the 1950s and 1960s." Set against the mythic-historic backdrop of Niagara Falls, Joyce Carol Oates explores the American family in crisis, but also America itself in the mid-twentieth century.

FROM THE CRITICS

Terrence Rafferty - The New York Times

At her best, as in the middle section of The Falls, she's like a contemporary Dreiser, both in her slovenliness and in her power. After 40 years and millions of words, Joyce Carol Oates remains implacable, unstoppable, and if she isn't truly a force of nature that's only because, as in any long relationship between a writer and her audience, there's not much mystery left.

Jane Ciabattari - The Washington Post

In her hypnotic new novel, The Falls, Oates juxtaposes a majestic and dangerous natural phenomenon -- the Falls at Niagara -- with a man-made monstrosity, the deadly witches' brew of nuclear and toxic waste known as Love Canal -- as the threatening elements underlying a family saga of self-destruction and redemption.

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. Agent, Jane Hawkins. Author tour. (Sept. 16) Forecast: This is likely to be one of Oates's biggest sellers-its heft, striking setting and sheer excellence should make it her highest-profile novel since Blonde. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The author of more than 30 books, Oates returns to her We Were the Mulvaneys theme of a family torn apart by external events. When Ariah's new husband, Erskine, throws himself into Niagara Falls on the first day of their honeymoon, she endures a seven-day vigil as she awaits the recovery of his body and soon becomes known as the Widow Bride of the Falls. Enter Dirk Burnaby, a local playboy lawyer, who falls in love with Ariah and marries her a month later. Their life goes well, with the birth of two sons and a daughter, but when Dirk takes on what would later be known as the Love Canal lawsuit, his long hours, the rumor of an affair, and the animosity of the community lead to estrangement from his family and then his death. Sixteen years later, we meet Ariah's children, who know nothing of Ariah's past as the Widow Bride; they have known only that the community has ridiculed them inexplicably. Through the discovery of their complicated history, all three children find direction. Oates uses the falls metaphor to powerful effect, dramatizing how our lives can get swept up by forces beyond our control. Highly recommended.-Joshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

AudioFile