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The Falls
It is 1950 and, after a disastrous honeymoon night, Ariah Erskine's young husband throws himself into the roaring waters of Niagara Falls. Ariah, "the Widow Bride of the Falls," begins a relentless seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found. At her side is confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby, who is unexpectedly drawn to this plain, strange woman. What follows is a passionate love affair, marriage, and family—a seemingly perfect existence. But the tragedy by which they were thrown together begins to shadow them, damaging their idyll with distrust, greed, and even murder. Set against the mythic-historic backdrop of Niagara Falls in the mid-twentieth century, this haunting exploration of the American family in crisis is a stunning achievement from "one of the great artistic forces of our time" ( The Nation ).
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
415 people are currently reading
7720 people want to read
About the author
Joyce Carol Oates
859 books9,692 followersJoyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,127 reviews
October 15, 2014
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 waterfall’s majestic rage always out of sight, a thing for the tourists but not for you... your car can plunge into it, a murderous trap, the falls your last surprise, your final destination... you can lead tours through it, thrilling and scaring the tourists with your easy ability to demonstrate mastery over nature’s terrors... you can dump things into it, no one will see, you can dump things that shouldn’t have been made and that have no place on this earth, things that move from water to soil, bubbling up tar-black in basements and schoolyards, sickening adults and killing children, and denied, always denied, by those who dumped such things.
And that’s the synopsis!
The Falls is a thick novel and a hypnotic one as well. It is easy to get lost in its opening 100 pages or so – not lost as in confused, lost as if in a strange waking dream, or the sleepy thoughts before slumber takes over. At first it is a story of an eccentric woman and a good man, and the love that brings them together. It is a novel that is dense with detail and characterization from beginning to end, but I had such an odd time with that first part. Perhaps it was due to that odd woman. Ariah is the most solipsistic of characters, dreadful and admirable and fascinating and frustrating. Depending on my mood, she either totally absorbed me or she put me to sleep. It was an interesting experience. At times I considered giving up because it was also a challenging experience and I’m not sure I was in the right frame of mind. I’m glad I didn’t! The story of Ariah and her suitor Dick Burnaby ends in two remarkable chapters that lit me right up: one about Ariah’s acceptance of a marriage proposal, detailed in prose so sharp and fierce and idiosyncratic that it woke all of the different parts of my mind; the other a much longer chapter depicting the early years of the marriage itself – a chapter full of loveliness and wisdom, passion and sadness, all the things I needed to suddenly become fully re-engaged with the novel.
The story after that first 100 pages is quite different. More traditional, well as far as Oates can ever be traditional. It is a sort of miniature family saga that focuses on Ariah’s three children, their loves and lives and ambitions and failures, and the battle that is being waged over the poison that has been dumped in the Niagara Falls region for decades. It becomes one of those Big Novels about Important Issues... but yet it still stays intimate. I was able to feel anger at corporate cupidity and the crass banality at the heart of many evil men, but The Falls' biggest attribute even amidst all of that is its brilliant characterization. The children of Ariah and Dick Burnably are amazing – and amazingly real – creations.
The novel troubled me a bit, specifically around Ariah’s later characterization. It made wonder... does Oates have a problem with women? I never expected to feel that way about one of my favorite authors, but the fact remains that many, many of Oates’ most vital female characters are either delicate victims or fascinating monsters. Is there no inbetween for her – and are there no genuine heroines? She has no problem in making Dick Burnaby and his two male children perfectly heroic in their perfectly human ways. They manage to be both real and good. Not so with Ariah. Why did she have to be transformed into such a horrorshow, such a toxic and repulsive figure? Was Oates even aware that what she was creating was not someone to be admired for her independence and eccentricity, but rather someone to be loathed for her small-mindedness, her tunnel vision, her mistreatment of her children? I dunno. Well, it was a disturbing realization but it cannot be denied that Ariah Burnaby is a unique creation. She's a great addition to the JCO gallery of Monster-Women.
Oates is known to be chilly writer, at times even callous or cruel. Not so much with The Falls. With the possible exception of the monstrous, deluded Ariah, her protagonists are written with much kindness and empathy. Even better, I am happy to report that this novel somehow finds its way to grace in the end. It was well-earned. There was a small moment near the end when one nearly-broken character takes another character’s hands – big, rough, scarred paws that have felt and even caused a lot of hurt – and she realizes that they are the most beautiful hands she’s ever seen. I read that part and thought to myself, This is why I love reading… these sublime human moments, these moments of transcendence. The Falls is full of such moments.
And that’s the synopsis!
The Falls is a thick novel and a hypnotic one as well. It is easy to get lost in its opening 100 pages or so – not lost as in confused, lost as if in a strange waking dream, or the sleepy thoughts before slumber takes over. At first it is a story of an eccentric woman and a good man, and the love that brings them together. It is a novel that is dense with detail and characterization from beginning to end, but I had such an odd time with that first part. Perhaps it was due to that odd woman. Ariah is the most solipsistic of characters, dreadful and admirable and fascinating and frustrating. Depending on my mood, she either totally absorbed me or she put me to sleep. It was an interesting experience. At times I considered giving up because it was also a challenging experience and I’m not sure I was in the right frame of mind. I’m glad I didn’t! The story of Ariah and her suitor Dick Burnaby ends in two remarkable chapters that lit me right up: one about Ariah’s acceptance of a marriage proposal, detailed in prose so sharp and fierce and idiosyncratic that it woke all of the different parts of my mind; the other a much longer chapter depicting the early years of the marriage itself – a chapter full of loveliness and wisdom, passion and sadness, all the things I needed to suddenly become fully re-engaged with the novel.
The story after that first 100 pages is quite different. More traditional, well as far as Oates can ever be traditional. It is a sort of miniature family saga that focuses on Ariah’s three children, their loves and lives and ambitions and failures, and the battle that is being waged over the poison that has been dumped in the Niagara Falls region for decades. It becomes one of those Big Novels about Important Issues... but yet it still stays intimate. I was able to feel anger at corporate cupidity and the crass banality at the heart of many evil men, but The Falls' biggest attribute even amidst all of that is its brilliant characterization. The children of Ariah and Dick Burnably are amazing – and amazingly real – creations.
The novel troubled me a bit, specifically around Ariah’s later characterization. It made wonder... does Oates have a problem with women? I never expected to feel that way about one of my favorite authors, but the fact remains that many, many of Oates’ most vital female characters are either delicate victims or fascinating monsters. Is there no inbetween for her – and are there no genuine heroines? She has no problem in making Dick Burnaby and his two male children perfectly heroic in their perfectly human ways. They manage to be both real and good. Not so with Ariah. Why did she have to be transformed into such a horrorshow, such a toxic and repulsive figure? Was Oates even aware that what she was creating was not someone to be admired for her independence and eccentricity, but rather someone to be loathed for her small-mindedness, her tunnel vision, her mistreatment of her children? I dunno. Well, it was a disturbing realization but it cannot be denied that Ariah Burnaby is a unique creation. She's a great addition to the JCO gallery of Monster-Women.
Oates is known to be chilly writer, at times even callous or cruel. Not so much with The Falls. With the possible exception of the monstrous, deluded Ariah, her protagonists are written with much kindness and empathy. Even better, I am happy to report that this novel somehow finds its way to grace in the end. It was well-earned. There was a small moment near the end when one nearly-broken character takes another character’s hands – big, rough, scarred paws that have felt and even caused a lot of hurt – and she realizes that they are the most beautiful hands she’s ever seen. I read that part and thought to myself, This is why I love reading… these sublime human moments, these moments of transcendence. The Falls is full of such moments.
November 24, 2007
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: description of Niagara Falls during the 1950s and the events surrounding the Love Canal lawsuit. Unfortunately, Oates breaks her promise, and instead focuses on the lives of the family members caught up in the time and the lawsuit: members the reader could care less about. I waded (more like skimmed) page after page of this novel for my book club (otherwise I would never have gone beyond page 90) only to find myself laughing hysterically by the end. The book goes like this: pages and pages of meaningless prose and flowery adjectives, during which moments of possibility and intellect actually appear, only to be abandoned as quickly as it was presented in place of more meaningless prose, until the reader is hit on the head with the end. Oates must have been jolted from her depression, or must have been as bored with her own book as I was (or she was late for a deadline) because she packs a full novel in the last 1/3 of the book - introducing new characters who are as bland as the originals - and does absolutely nothing with them. Seriously. A total disaster of a book.
July 30, 2020
"Gracias, pero nadie puede ayudarme. Creo que estoy... condenada".
Esta es una novela que me moría por leer desde hace ya mucho tiempo, pero estando la mayoría de las novelas de Joyce Carol Oates descatalogadas o directamente no editadas en España, (un sacrilegio a estas alturas si tenemos en cuenta lo prolífica de esta autora), era una tarea casi imposible llegar a ella. Por un milagro me llegó, y una vez más y después de haberla disfrutado muchísimo, tengo que decir que no me ha defraudado, aunque si es verdad que al tener Qué fue de los Mulvaney tan reciente, no me ha parecido de sus obras más redondas. Tiene la misma estructura y más o menos sigue los mismos derroteros que la de los Mulvaney y Niágara vuelve a ser una deconstrucción de lo que es una familia americana con sus luces y sus sombras y vuelven a tocarse los temas oatianos de siempre: las decisiones de los padres que influyen directamente en la vida de sus hijos con la consiguiente marca en su vida de adultos, el papel de la mujer constreñido en ciertos ámbitos a hacer solo de esposa y madre y por supuesto la lucha por conservar la cordura cuando la realidad se hace demasiado insportable para muchos de sus personajes.
"La noche anterior había tenido uno de esos momentos en que tenía ganas de llorar. No es que fuera desdichada, solo tenía ganas de llorar. Sabía por las otras madres del parque (¡la mayoría mucho más jóvenes que Ariah!) que todas tenían ganas de llorar de vez en cuando, si eres mujer te está permitido."
Estos temas aparecen casi continuamente en sus novelas, sobre todo las que engloban a las familias, en algunos casos JCO los desarrollan más acertadamente que en otros, pero siempre siempre hay momentos memorables que se quedarán grabados en la memoria del lector. En Niágara JCO se centra en la vida de Ariah que se queda viuda al día siguiente de su matrimonio con el reverendo Gilbert Erskine; tras la traumática noche de bodas Gilbert desaparece y se lanza al vacío de las cataratas del Niágara, que es donde están pasando la luna de miel. Ariah se pasa una semana esperando la aparición del cadáver, siete días de duelo vagando por la neblina de las cataratas y la leyenda local la convierten en “la recién casada viuda de las cataratas”, una figura legendaria que se quedará ya para siempre en la memoria local. Un mes después Ariah se casa con Dirk Burnaby, un abogado de éxito, con quién tiene tres hijos y la familia se asienta ya definitivamente en la zona.
"Los Burnaby eran una pareja romántica como Fred Astaire y Ginger Rogers. Cuando uno entraba en una habitación en la que el otro esperaba, empezaba a oirse música de baile".
A simple vista parece la historia de una familia normal y corriente pero las familias de las novelas de JCO no son nada normales ni corrientes. La primera parte de la novela me parece ejemplar en el sentido de que la autora narra toda la parte de la luna de miel y el suicidio de Gilbert, con la atmósfera medio irreal de las cataratas de fondo, y conocemos ambos puntos de vista, tanto el de Ariah como el de Gilbert, y ya aquí la autora nos está sumergiendo en la mente de Ariah y en las consecuencias que esto tendrá en su futuro como madre y esposa de Dirk Burnaby. Quizás porque la zona de las cataratas del Niágara están muy unidas a la infancia de JCO, ya que la autora nacida en Lockport (Nueva York) debía conocer muy bien la zona solo a media hora de trayecto entre una y otra localidad, percibimos lo conectada que la Oates está con el paisaje, con el agua, con la fuerza de las leyendas locales. La Oates nos cuenta la fuerza de lo irresistible del agua que lanza una especie de hechizo sobre mucho de los personajes, especialmente la familia de Ariah, unas aguas que pueden hechizar o maldecir.
Puede que el lector se quede con la sensación de que algunas escenas no terminan de ser explicadas o desarrolladas, pero yo esto no lo veo como un defecto o como una falta de interés de la autora en dar explicaciones, todo lo contrario, en todas sus historias pasa: creo que la intención de la autora es que estos momentos inconclusos permanezcan en la mente del lector y él mismo encuentre la explicación, normalmente siempre son momentos medio irreales, y hay que dirimir que es la verdad y que es la imaginación del personaje, una particularidad que a mi me fascina de esta autora, todo hay que decirlo.
"Las mujeres estadounidenses no trabajaban. En especial, las mujeres casadas de la clase social de Ariah. Podía imaginar como habría recibido semejante propuesta su padre si la hubiera hecho su madre. Ninguna mujer de la familia Littrell trabajaba. Ninguna. (Excepto una tía soltera o dos, maestras de escuela. Pero estas no contaban)."
Esta novela transcurre entre los 50 y finales de los 70 y explora los cambios sociales como nadie; desde ese hipócrita integrismo religioso del que provienen tanto Ariah como su primer marido, Gilbert, hasta las consecuencias de toda la expansión industrial en torno a las cataratas, el verse abocado a trabajar en alguna de las industrias tóxicas en torno a la zona o verse abocado al paro y por supuesto era la época en que la mujer empezaba a desplegar sus alas y dejar el ambiente más doméstico. En definitiva, me ha parecido una novela magnífica, muy parecida a "Qué fue de los Mulvaney", pero quizás algo más irregular en el sentido de que hay momentos muy repetitivos en torno a algún personaje, aunque también es verdad que es el sello de la gran JCO
"A menudo Juliet parece una sonámbula al aire libre. Sus ojos, sus párpados pesados, su ondulado cabello que le llega hasta más abajo de los hombros como una crin sin cepillar. Su cabello exuda un olor a algo romántico y a melancolía como las hojas húmedas de otoño o las violetas azotadas y sacudidas pro la lluvia."
Esta es una novela que me moría por leer desde hace ya mucho tiempo, pero estando la mayoría de las novelas de Joyce Carol Oates descatalogadas o directamente no editadas en España, (un sacrilegio a estas alturas si tenemos en cuenta lo prolífica de esta autora), era una tarea casi imposible llegar a ella. Por un milagro me llegó, y una vez más y después de haberla disfrutado muchísimo, tengo que decir que no me ha defraudado, aunque si es verdad que al tener Qué fue de los Mulvaney tan reciente, no me ha parecido de sus obras más redondas. Tiene la misma estructura y más o menos sigue los mismos derroteros que la de los Mulvaney y Niágara vuelve a ser una deconstrucción de lo que es una familia americana con sus luces y sus sombras y vuelven a tocarse los temas oatianos de siempre: las decisiones de los padres que influyen directamente en la vida de sus hijos con la consiguiente marca en su vida de adultos, el papel de la mujer constreñido en ciertos ámbitos a hacer solo de esposa y madre y por supuesto la lucha por conservar la cordura cuando la realidad se hace demasiado insportable para muchos de sus personajes.
"La noche anterior había tenido uno de esos momentos en que tenía ganas de llorar. No es que fuera desdichada, solo tenía ganas de llorar. Sabía por las otras madres del parque (¡la mayoría mucho más jóvenes que Ariah!) que todas tenían ganas de llorar de vez en cuando, si eres mujer te está permitido."
Estos temas aparecen casi continuamente en sus novelas, sobre todo las que engloban a las familias, en algunos casos JCO los desarrollan más acertadamente que en otros, pero siempre siempre hay momentos memorables que se quedarán grabados en la memoria del lector. En Niágara JCO se centra en la vida de Ariah que se queda viuda al día siguiente de su matrimonio con el reverendo Gilbert Erskine; tras la traumática noche de bodas Gilbert desaparece y se lanza al vacío de las cataratas del Niágara, que es donde están pasando la luna de miel. Ariah se pasa una semana esperando la aparición del cadáver, siete días de duelo vagando por la neblina de las cataratas y la leyenda local la convierten en “la recién casada viuda de las cataratas”, una figura legendaria que se quedará ya para siempre en la memoria local. Un mes después Ariah se casa con Dirk Burnaby, un abogado de éxito, con quién tiene tres hijos y la familia se asienta ya definitivamente en la zona.
"Los Burnaby eran una pareja romántica como Fred Astaire y Ginger Rogers. Cuando uno entraba en una habitación en la que el otro esperaba, empezaba a oirse música de baile".
A simple vista parece la historia de una familia normal y corriente pero las familias de las novelas de JCO no son nada normales ni corrientes. La primera parte de la novela me parece ejemplar en el sentido de que la autora narra toda la parte de la luna de miel y el suicidio de Gilbert, con la atmósfera medio irreal de las cataratas de fondo, y conocemos ambos puntos de vista, tanto el de Ariah como el de Gilbert, y ya aquí la autora nos está sumergiendo en la mente de Ariah y en las consecuencias que esto tendrá en su futuro como madre y esposa de Dirk Burnaby. Quizás porque la zona de las cataratas del Niágara están muy unidas a la infancia de JCO, ya que la autora nacida en Lockport (Nueva York) debía conocer muy bien la zona solo a media hora de trayecto entre una y otra localidad, percibimos lo conectada que la Oates está con el paisaje, con el agua, con la fuerza de las leyendas locales. La Oates nos cuenta la fuerza de lo irresistible del agua que lanza una especie de hechizo sobre mucho de los personajes, especialmente la familia de Ariah, unas aguas que pueden hechizar o maldecir.
Puede que el lector se quede con la sensación de que algunas escenas no terminan de ser explicadas o desarrolladas, pero yo esto no lo veo como un defecto o como una falta de interés de la autora en dar explicaciones, todo lo contrario, en todas sus historias pasa: creo que la intención de la autora es que estos momentos inconclusos permanezcan en la mente del lector y él mismo encuentre la explicación, normalmente siempre son momentos medio irreales, y hay que dirimir que es la verdad y que es la imaginación del personaje, una particularidad que a mi me fascina de esta autora, todo hay que decirlo.
"Las mujeres estadounidenses no trabajaban. En especial, las mujeres casadas de la clase social de Ariah. Podía imaginar como habría recibido semejante propuesta su padre si la hubiera hecho su madre. Ninguna mujer de la familia Littrell trabajaba. Ninguna. (Excepto una tía soltera o dos, maestras de escuela. Pero estas no contaban)."
Esta novela transcurre entre los 50 y finales de los 70 y explora los cambios sociales como nadie; desde ese hipócrita integrismo religioso del que provienen tanto Ariah como su primer marido, Gilbert, hasta las consecuencias de toda la expansión industrial en torno a las cataratas, el verse abocado a trabajar en alguna de las industrias tóxicas en torno a la zona o verse abocado al paro y por supuesto era la época en que la mujer empezaba a desplegar sus alas y dejar el ambiente más doméstico. En definitiva, me ha parecido una novela magnífica, muy parecida a "Qué fue de los Mulvaney", pero quizás algo más irregular en el sentido de que hay momentos muy repetitivos en torno a algún personaje, aunque también es verdad que es el sello de la gran JCO
"A menudo Juliet parece una sonámbula al aire libre. Sus ojos, sus párpados pesados, su ondulado cabello que le llega hasta más abajo de los hombros como una crin sin cepillar. Su cabello exuda un olor a algo romántico y a melancolía como las hojas húmedas de otoño o las violetas azotadas y sacudidas pro la lluvia."
October 13, 2025
Al principio parece una historia triste y previsible sobre un matrimonio que termina en tragedia junto a las cataratas.
Pero se van descubriendo capas entre personajes: la memoria, la culpa, el deseo, la justicia, la libertad, la familia.
Lo que parecía un drama íntimo se convierte en un retrato familiar y social de cómo se esconde su dolor detrás de la apariencia, y se va entendiendo el por qué.
Su estilo es sencillo, austero, y muy eficiente, lleno de silencios y detalles que tienen mucha más relevancia que las grandes acciones, mientras la trama va haciéndose más interesante, con una escritura algo hipnótica, sin grandes artificios, te atrapa con esa tensión callada que aumenta a medida que los personajes crecen emocionalmente.
Pero se van descubriendo capas entre personajes: la memoria, la culpa, el deseo, la justicia, la libertad, la familia.
Lo que parecía un drama íntimo se convierte en un retrato familiar y social de cómo se esconde su dolor detrás de la apariencia, y se va entendiendo el por qué.
Su estilo es sencillo, austero, y muy eficiente, lleno de silencios y detalles que tienen mucha más relevancia que las grandes acciones, mientras la trama va haciéndose más interesante, con una escritura algo hipnótica, sin grandes artificios, te atrapa con esa tensión callada que aumenta a medida que los personajes crecen emocionalmente.
May 6, 2018
Impetuoso, eccessivo e travolgente, proprio come le cascate del Niagara... Non era in programma leggere questo libro, no. E’ in ebook e DEVO leggere i miei libri di carta. Ma. Recentemente ho letto un altro libro della Oates e i riferimenti a questo mi hanno stuzzicato. Poi, ho vagheggiato l’idea di visitare le cascate del Niagara, una delle meraviglie del mondo. Allora ho iniziato a sbirciarlo, così, tanto per fare, e mi sono trovata immediatamente sul bordo del baratro, lanciata dentro la furia delle acque. L’incipit è davvero una specie di calamita che ti cattura che ti impedisce di lasciare le pagine: un uomo si getta nelle cascate e tu cadi nel gorgo con lui. Tutto è eccessivo, in alcuni casi ci sono anche cadute di stile (ahimé la scena “tombale”), ma è appassionante, quasi a livello morboso e quasi come una soap opera, con tutti i colpi di scena annessi e connessi, buoni, cattivi e perfino un lato ecologista. Ma. Mi è piaciuto, mi ha investito, mi ha fatto venire voglia di non staccarmene, mi ha fatto incuriosire e mi ha fatto capire che è molto lontano il giorno in cui sarò alle Niagara Falls, anzi, forse non ci andrò mai, luogo pericoloso per l’anima, vertiginoso per lo spirito e carico dello spirito americano. Dalla lettura ne esco zuppa, con tutte le scarpe, ma ne è valsa la pena, farsi travolgere dal tanto e troppo della Oates che questa volta mi ha incollato ai destini della dannata famiglia Burnaby e dannata io con loro.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascate_...
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascate_...
December 9, 2013
You can't help pitying the people who show up in the novels of Joyce Carol Oates. From the first page, you sense that they're going to be known to death, literally splayed by her insight. And before you realize it, she's done the same thing to us. For 40 years, she's coyly enticed us with the gothic details of ordinary life and then - when it's too late - pinned us on the sharp point of her wisdom.
I read "The Falls," her latest novel, in what seemed like one held breath. Set around Niagara, the story reflects all the romance, mystery, and terror of that spectacular waterfall. It's a great confluence of tones - grotesque and domestic, tragic and comic. The currents of various styles and points of view blend together in a way that can't possibly work, but does.
How else to begin at Niagara Falls but with a honeymoon - and a suicide? Ariah Littrell's desperation to be married had reached a fever pitch, which is pretty much the mental condition she maintains for the rest of her life. Though she's terrified of sex and disgusted by her own body, at 29 "she would have gladly traded her soul for an engagement ring," Oates writes. The daughter of a prominent minister, she's thrilled to be marrying another minister, even if she doesn't really love him, even if she knows he can't love her, "an old maid."
The morning after their first night together - an evening of consummate humiliation - her new husband answers the call of the roaring water outside their bridal suite and throws himself over. It's a classic Oates moment - hypnotically awful, the kind of slow-motion disaster you can't take your eyes off.
Ariah, long determined to be the perfect wife, immediately recasts herself as "The Widow Bride of the Falls," maintaining a seven-day vigil while police search for her new husband's body.
The hotel manager, desperate to downplay this common "accident" as gracefully as possible, appeals for help to a friend, a charming, well-connected lawyer named Dirk Burnaby. But poor Dirk is drawn to Ariah the way people are drawn to the water, and he falls head over heels for this anxious, brittle woman.
The heart of the novel is the story of their marriage and the family they build together through the 1950s and early '60s. Dirk loves his wife and their three children, his law firm grows more prosperous, and the Burnabys enjoy an idyllic suburban existence. Except that Ariah wields a kind of psychological brutality, cutting away anything unpleasant, anything that troubles her, such as memories of her first husband, news of the world, the complexity of her new husband's legal work, neighbors' friendly invitations, even telephone calls. It's all banished in a flurry of anxious protests and ferocious pleading. She alternately shrieks and cajoles, stares down anyone who crosses her, or runs from the room with hands over her ears.
Ariah excites the same perverse fascination as Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie." In fact, she's a kind of middle-class companion to Tennessee Williams's classic mother-monster, though she's trapped in a mythical present instead of a mythical past. She draws her children around her even as she repels them, constantly calling attention to her anxieties with ceaseless, ludicrous denials that anything is wrong.
Dirk, meanwhile, finds himself compelled to represent a young woman who claims that her neighborhood, along an area known as Love Canal, has been poisoned by chemical waste. There's little precedent for environmental liability, and Dirk knows that a conspiracy of business and political forces will make justice almost impossible to attain, but he pursues the case with a dogged idealism that threatens his business, his family, and his own life.
"The Falls" is written in a strange, fluid cycle of voices, a blending of these characters' thoughts and the author's searing, ironic judgment. Sometimes, characters speak for themselves, or the three Burnaby children speak in a kind of composite voice. Some sections employ the repetitions of a chorus. Others sound like newspaper accounts. One odd chapter reads like an eroticized ghost story.
Oates handles all this with winning confidence, moving through intimate details just as deftly as she re-creates a crucial period in environmental law. Most of the mysteries here are tied up, but others are lost in the mist. When she tells the story of Dirk's grandfather, an acrobat who once walked across the Falls on a wire, I couldn't help thinking of the daredevil feat she braves herself with this novel.
Ultimately, corporate thugs and their crooked judges can't keep chemicals from oozing out of the ground, any more than Ariah can keep the past from seeping into her children's lives. The desperate struggle to hide and the desperate struggle to uncover collide in these pages with gripping effect.
Surprisingly, though it's full of creepy, ominous energy, by the end this is a novel of forgiveness, of learning to accept what's oddest and cruelest about those we love. It's a scary, perceptive portrayal of family life, particularly the burdens parents force on their children and the way love can make those burdens, if not light, then at least bearable.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0914/p1...
I read "The Falls," her latest novel, in what seemed like one held breath. Set around Niagara, the story reflects all the romance, mystery, and terror of that spectacular waterfall. It's a great confluence of tones - grotesque and domestic, tragic and comic. The currents of various styles and points of view blend together in a way that can't possibly work, but does.
How else to begin at Niagara Falls but with a honeymoon - and a suicide? Ariah Littrell's desperation to be married had reached a fever pitch, which is pretty much the mental condition she maintains for the rest of her life. Though she's terrified of sex and disgusted by her own body, at 29 "she would have gladly traded her soul for an engagement ring," Oates writes. The daughter of a prominent minister, she's thrilled to be marrying another minister, even if she doesn't really love him, even if she knows he can't love her, "an old maid."
The morning after their first night together - an evening of consummate humiliation - her new husband answers the call of the roaring water outside their bridal suite and throws himself over. It's a classic Oates moment - hypnotically awful, the kind of slow-motion disaster you can't take your eyes off.
Ariah, long determined to be the perfect wife, immediately recasts herself as "The Widow Bride of the Falls," maintaining a seven-day vigil while police search for her new husband's body.
The hotel manager, desperate to downplay this common "accident" as gracefully as possible, appeals for help to a friend, a charming, well-connected lawyer named Dirk Burnaby. But poor Dirk is drawn to Ariah the way people are drawn to the water, and he falls head over heels for this anxious, brittle woman.
The heart of the novel is the story of their marriage and the family they build together through the 1950s and early '60s. Dirk loves his wife and their three children, his law firm grows more prosperous, and the Burnabys enjoy an idyllic suburban existence. Except that Ariah wields a kind of psychological brutality, cutting away anything unpleasant, anything that troubles her, such as memories of her first husband, news of the world, the complexity of her new husband's legal work, neighbors' friendly invitations, even telephone calls. It's all banished in a flurry of anxious protests and ferocious pleading. She alternately shrieks and cajoles, stares down anyone who crosses her, or runs from the room with hands over her ears.
Ariah excites the same perverse fascination as Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie." In fact, she's a kind of middle-class companion to Tennessee Williams's classic mother-monster, though she's trapped in a mythical present instead of a mythical past. She draws her children around her even as she repels them, constantly calling attention to her anxieties with ceaseless, ludicrous denials that anything is wrong.
Dirk, meanwhile, finds himself compelled to represent a young woman who claims that her neighborhood, along an area known as Love Canal, has been poisoned by chemical waste. There's little precedent for environmental liability, and Dirk knows that a conspiracy of business and political forces will make justice almost impossible to attain, but he pursues the case with a dogged idealism that threatens his business, his family, and his own life.
"The Falls" is written in a strange, fluid cycle of voices, a blending of these characters' thoughts and the author's searing, ironic judgment. Sometimes, characters speak for themselves, or the three Burnaby children speak in a kind of composite voice. Some sections employ the repetitions of a chorus. Others sound like newspaper accounts. One odd chapter reads like an eroticized ghost story.
Oates handles all this with winning confidence, moving through intimate details just as deftly as she re-creates a crucial period in environmental law. Most of the mysteries here are tied up, but others are lost in the mist. When she tells the story of Dirk's grandfather, an acrobat who once walked across the Falls on a wire, I couldn't help thinking of the daredevil feat she braves herself with this novel.
Ultimately, corporate thugs and their crooked judges can't keep chemicals from oozing out of the ground, any more than Ariah can keep the past from seeping into her children's lives. The desperate struggle to hide and the desperate struggle to uncover collide in these pages with gripping effect.
Surprisingly, though it's full of creepy, ominous energy, by the end this is a novel of forgiveness, of learning to accept what's oddest and cruelest about those we love. It's a scary, perceptive portrayal of family life, particularly the burdens parents force on their children and the way love can make those burdens, if not light, then at least bearable.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0914/p1...
July 12, 2025
«Al destino non si sfugge, Ariah. Né da ricchi né da poveri».
1950
La signora Ariah Erskine, sposa da 21 ore e già vedova.
Gilbert si è gettato nel fiume.
Ariah in meno di 24 ore è già vedova senza saperne il motivo perchè si è sposata al limite di un'età decente (29 anni!) con un uomo conosciuto a malapena. Qualcosa di combinato tra due famiglie presbiteriane in un contesto che li fa prigionieri di una morale castrante
Accade l'impensabile a Niagara Falls: capitale mondiale delle lune di miele ma anche dei suicidi.
Ma allora perchè impensabile?
Perchè Gilbert era un novello sposo e un reverendo..
Il destino però ha in serbo altro per Ariah: conoscere un avvocato di nome Dirk Burnaby.
Una passione improvvisa e travolgente. Il bisogno spasmodico di ricucire ciò che si è lacerato. Rinsaldare i bordi costruendo una barricata che si chiama famiglia..
Un romanzo con continue svolte.
La storia di una donna fragile che si costruisce una corazza.
La storia di un uomo che non può più ignorare ciò che accade a Niagara Falls. Lui cresciuto tra i ricchi apre gli occhi sulla provenienza di tutti quei soldi ( e questa è storia vera: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal). E poi ci sono i figli che dovranno rimettere assieme i pezzi di ciò che andato in frantumi..
Impetuoso e travolgente come le cascate, tra i romanzi, per me, migliori di J. C. Oates
”Come aveva fatto a diventare, senza accorgersene, una specie di ago in piedi, in cui la testa (vuota) era la cruna, attraverso cui il Tempo scorreva in un flusso irregolare ma incessante? Passava, passava, incessantemente scorreva, verso il passato.”
1950
La signora Ariah Erskine, sposa da 21 ore e già vedova.
Gilbert si è gettato nel fiume.
Ariah in meno di 24 ore è già vedova senza saperne il motivo perchè si è sposata al limite di un'età decente (29 anni!) con un uomo conosciuto a malapena. Qualcosa di combinato tra due famiglie presbiteriane in un contesto che li fa prigionieri di una morale castrante
Accade l'impensabile a Niagara Falls: capitale mondiale delle lune di miele ma anche dei suicidi.
Ma allora perchè impensabile?
Perchè Gilbert era un novello sposo e un reverendo..
Il destino però ha in serbo altro per Ariah: conoscere un avvocato di nome Dirk Burnaby.
Una passione improvvisa e travolgente. Il bisogno spasmodico di ricucire ciò che si è lacerato. Rinsaldare i bordi costruendo una barricata che si chiama famiglia..
Un romanzo con continue svolte.
La storia di una donna fragile che si costruisce una corazza.
La storia di un uomo che non può più ignorare ciò che accade a Niagara Falls. Lui cresciuto tra i ricchi apre gli occhi sulla provenienza di tutti quei soldi ( e questa è storia vera: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal). E poi ci sono i figli che dovranno rimettere assieme i pezzi di ciò che andato in frantumi..
Impetuoso e travolgente come le cascate, tra i romanzi, per me, migliori di J. C. Oates
”Come aveva fatto a diventare, senza accorgersene, una specie di ago in piedi, in cui la testa (vuota) era la cruna, attraverso cui il Tempo scorreva in un flusso irregolare ma incessante? Passava, passava, incessantemente scorreva, verso il passato.”
August 5, 2014
The beginning of this book mesmerized me much as the very Falls described here by Oates. For 120 pages, the book was just shy of glued to my hand, and I could not put it down.
Then, for the next 200 pages, I could barely pick it back up, to continue. By the mid-300s, I was hoping there would be a chemical explosion at one of the factories and all of the characters would die, putting me out of my misery.
I had never before read Joyce Carol Oates, so I don't know if this inconsistency is typical, or rare. Her writing is both technical and inspired, to the point of my making comparisons of her style to that of the Brontes. But, something happened to the powerful storytelling of the first section, and it never returned, nor did my interest.
Then, for the next 200 pages, I could barely pick it back up, to continue. By the mid-300s, I was hoping there would be a chemical explosion at one of the factories and all of the characters would die, putting me out of my misery.
I had never before read Joyce Carol Oates, so I don't know if this inconsistency is typical, or rare. Her writing is both technical and inspired, to the point of my making comparisons of her style to that of the Brontes. But, something happened to the powerful storytelling of the first section, and it never returned, nor did my interest.
September 5, 2022
"The Falls" is an expertly crafted plate of liver and onions, unappetizing despite the skill it took to prepare.
This is the second (very long) Joyce Carol Oates book I have disliked. The author is so clearly talented, but her work so far has left me cold.
This is the second (very long) Joyce Carol Oates book I have disliked. The author is so clearly talented, but her work so far has left me cold.
December 13, 2018
“La famiglia è l'unica cosa che esiste al mondo. Visto che a questo mondo Dio non c'è”
“Le cascate” era un romanzo finito nella mia DR (Don’t Read) e vi sarebbe rimasto se questa estate non fossi arrivato proprio davanti alle Horseshoe Falls.
Il libro aveva la fama sinistra di essere prolisso fino al prolasso, conoscendo JCO non stentavo a crederlo. Avete letto Una famiglia americana? Vi è piaciuto? Le Cascate sono un altro romanzone sulla famiglia, sono un trentennio di storia americana vista prima con gli occhi di genitori e poi con quelli dei figli. Inizia e termina a Niagara Falls, trattandosi di JCO è un romanzo con dentro tanti romanzi. Quello più riconoscibile è Chesil Beach; Gilbert e Ariah ricordano Edward e Florence (Chissà se Mc Ewan ha preso spunto). JCO riesce ad essere coinvolgente fin da subito, la trama si srotola con fluidità, se si è reduci dal viaggio in quella zona, la si apprezza senz’altro maggiormente. È ciò che mi è capitato, ho ripercorso i miei passi nella parte americana delle cascate, sovrapposto l’albergo in cui alloggiavano i protagonisti al mio, rivisto il molo d’attracco del Maid of the Mist (è la barca solitaria che nella foto va incontro alla furia delle cascate). Diciamo che la prima parte del romanzo, amputando il resto, sarebbe un racconto da cinque stelle. JCO non è impetuosa come le cascate di cui racconta, più che il Niagara sembra il Susquehanna, il fiume che serpeggia fra gli stati di New York e Pennsylvania e trasporta con sé di tutto, dalle scorie nucleari al letame. Un altro motivo che mi aveva indotto a mettere in DR “Le Cascate” era la sua etichetta di libro ecologista. Io non sono insensibile alla causa, ma i libri di denuncia non sono il mio genere preferito. La questione ecologica inizia ad esser trattata più o meno a metà del libro, è ben integrata nella trama e fa apprezzare come muti negli anni l’atteggiamento dell’opinione pubblica in materia. JCO ha fatto un buon lavoro anche in questo senso, pur eccedendo, in alcune scene secondarie. Ai ¾ del libro non mi sembrava vi fossero i presupposti per un declino della storia, invece JCO ha aperto tre nuovi punti narrazione dandoli in gestione ai fratelli Burnaby; nessun guadagno da quel momento in avanti, i tre negozi hanno lavorato in perdita.
Nella presentazione del libro si parla di un fenomeno chiamato "idroacro-psichico" che renderebbe temporaneamente privo di volontà un uomo, come fosse sotto l'influsso di un ipnotizzatore. Di fronte alle cascate anch’io ho accarezzato l’idea di essere inghiottito dalla loro bocca insaziabile, digerito frettolosamente e riconsegnato alle rive strapazzato ma incolume. Questa sensazione è ben spiegata dalla scrittrice in questi passaggi:
Capiva il primitivo, malevolo potere ipnotico delle Cascate del Niagara: stava ricominciando a provare la sinistra attrazione che aveva provato anni prima, da adolescente, quando le sue emozioni erano più grezze e più superficiali. Quel senso di sfacelo, di perdita e di panico, così simile alla sensazione di innamorarsi senza volere.
Se si guardava bene, si vedevano piccoli arcobaleni occhieggiare e brillare sul fiume. Ebbe un brivido, e sorrise. Il fragore delle American Falls, poco distante, sembrava penetrarle nell'anima.
Possiamo ipotizzare che, sotto l'influsso delle Cascate del Niagara, l'uomo cessi di esistere ed al tempo stesso aneli all'immortalità. Rinascere, risorgere come nella promessa cristiana, è forse la speranza più crudele. In silenzio, la vittima dichiara solennemente alle Cascate: «Sì, avete ucciso migliaia di persone, ma non potrete uccidere me. Perché sono io».
Colonna sonora
Battle Hymn of the Republic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy6AO...
Shake, Rattle and Roll - Bill Haley and his Comets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B7xr...
Promozione turistica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB6gH...
Celebrazione della follia
http://www.nationalgeographic.it/mult...
“Le cascate” era un romanzo finito nella mia DR (Don’t Read) e vi sarebbe rimasto se questa estate non fossi arrivato proprio davanti alle Horseshoe Falls.
Il libro aveva la fama sinistra di essere prolisso fino al prolasso, conoscendo JCO non stentavo a crederlo. Avete letto Una famiglia americana? Vi è piaciuto? Le Cascate sono un altro romanzone sulla famiglia, sono un trentennio di storia americana vista prima con gli occhi di genitori e poi con quelli dei figli. Inizia e termina a Niagara Falls, trattandosi di JCO è un romanzo con dentro tanti romanzi. Quello più riconoscibile è Chesil Beach; Gilbert e Ariah ricordano Edward e Florence (Chissà se Mc Ewan ha preso spunto). JCO riesce ad essere coinvolgente fin da subito, la trama si srotola con fluidità, se si è reduci dal viaggio in quella zona, la si apprezza senz’altro maggiormente. È ciò che mi è capitato, ho ripercorso i miei passi nella parte americana delle cascate, sovrapposto l’albergo in cui alloggiavano i protagonisti al mio, rivisto il molo d’attracco del Maid of the Mist (è la barca solitaria che nella foto va incontro alla furia delle cascate). Diciamo che la prima parte del romanzo, amputando il resto, sarebbe un racconto da cinque stelle. JCO non è impetuosa come le cascate di cui racconta, più che il Niagara sembra il Susquehanna, il fiume che serpeggia fra gli stati di New York e Pennsylvania e trasporta con sé di tutto, dalle scorie nucleari al letame. Un altro motivo che mi aveva indotto a mettere in DR “Le Cascate” era la sua etichetta di libro ecologista. Io non sono insensibile alla causa, ma i libri di denuncia non sono il mio genere preferito. La questione ecologica inizia ad esser trattata più o meno a metà del libro, è ben integrata nella trama e fa apprezzare come muti negli anni l’atteggiamento dell’opinione pubblica in materia. JCO ha fatto un buon lavoro anche in questo senso, pur eccedendo, in alcune scene secondarie. Ai ¾ del libro non mi sembrava vi fossero i presupposti per un declino della storia, invece JCO ha aperto tre nuovi punti narrazione dandoli in gestione ai fratelli Burnaby; nessun guadagno da quel momento in avanti, i tre negozi hanno lavorato in perdita.
Nella presentazione del libro si parla di un fenomeno chiamato "idroacro-psichico" che renderebbe temporaneamente privo di volontà un uomo, come fosse sotto l'influsso di un ipnotizzatore. Di fronte alle cascate anch’io ho accarezzato l’idea di essere inghiottito dalla loro bocca insaziabile, digerito frettolosamente e riconsegnato alle rive strapazzato ma incolume. Questa sensazione è ben spiegata dalla scrittrice in questi passaggi:
Capiva il primitivo, malevolo potere ipnotico delle Cascate del Niagara: stava ricominciando a provare la sinistra attrazione che aveva provato anni prima, da adolescente, quando le sue emozioni erano più grezze e più superficiali. Quel senso di sfacelo, di perdita e di panico, così simile alla sensazione di innamorarsi senza volere.
Se si guardava bene, si vedevano piccoli arcobaleni occhieggiare e brillare sul fiume. Ebbe un brivido, e sorrise. Il fragore delle American Falls, poco distante, sembrava penetrarle nell'anima.
Possiamo ipotizzare che, sotto l'influsso delle Cascate del Niagara, l'uomo cessi di esistere ed al tempo stesso aneli all'immortalità. Rinascere, risorgere come nella promessa cristiana, è forse la speranza più crudele. In silenzio, la vittima dichiara solennemente alle Cascate: «Sì, avete ucciso migliaia di persone, ma non potrete uccidere me. Perché sono io».
Colonna sonora
Battle Hymn of the Republic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy6AO...
Shake, Rattle and Roll - Bill Haley and his Comets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B7xr...
Promozione turistica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB6gH...
Celebrazione della follia
http://www.nationalgeographic.it/mult...
February 1, 2018
Illusioni ottiche
Grande libro. Si parte da una notte di nozze catastrofica (sì, come il Chesil Beach di Mac Ewan), e, dal nucleo iniziale di una coppia nata male, la storia si allarga su la società dagli anni ’50 fino a un giorno preciso del 1978.
Ogni evento è vissuto a più riprese, da angolazioni diverse, a seconda del personaggio narratore di quel momento, ogni voce ha il proprio timbro inconfondibile; così le storie, per lo più infelici o assolutamente tragiche, si tingono di colori sfumati.
La struttura del romazo è raffinata, a scatole cinesi, storie all’interno di storie, ma anziché procedere dalla più grande alla più piccola, la Oates ci fa compiere il cammino inverso.
Ariah, la donna dalla quale tutto si crea è un personaggio alla Oates: piccola, apparentemente fragile ed effettivamente indifesa, sviluppa una forza dirompente, violenta, che implode sulla propria famiglia. E’ crudele la sua sorte, è crudele lei, ma è anche crudele l’autore nel trascinarci, ipnoticamente, verso un finale in cui fa balenare sotto i nostri occhi gli arcobaleni nati dalle gocce delle cascate del Niagara, grandi protagoniste del libro, per sottrarli alla vista l'attimo dopo: “Così pallidi, così fragili, appena più di illusioni ottiche, sembra. Guardate ancora, sono spariti.”
Vertiginosa cancellazione delle emozioni violente che ci ha fatto vivere in tutto il romanzo tra morti, incidenti, suicidi ed omicidi, malattie degenerative e processi persi, eventi sempre ricoperti dal velo deformante dell'acqua che scorre e dello sguardo verde veleno di Ariah, la vedova bianca.
Grande libro. Si parte da una notte di nozze catastrofica (sì, come il Chesil Beach di Mac Ewan), e, dal nucleo iniziale di una coppia nata male, la storia si allarga su la società dagli anni ’50 fino a un giorno preciso del 1978.
Ogni evento è vissuto a più riprese, da angolazioni diverse, a seconda del personaggio narratore di quel momento, ogni voce ha il proprio timbro inconfondibile; così le storie, per lo più infelici o assolutamente tragiche, si tingono di colori sfumati.
La struttura del romazo è raffinata, a scatole cinesi, storie all’interno di storie, ma anziché procedere dalla più grande alla più piccola, la Oates ci fa compiere il cammino inverso.
Ariah, la donna dalla quale tutto si crea è un personaggio alla Oates: piccola, apparentemente fragile ed effettivamente indifesa, sviluppa una forza dirompente, violenta, che implode sulla propria famiglia. E’ crudele la sua sorte, è crudele lei, ma è anche crudele l’autore nel trascinarci, ipnoticamente, verso un finale in cui fa balenare sotto i nostri occhi gli arcobaleni nati dalle gocce delle cascate del Niagara, grandi protagoniste del libro, per sottrarli alla vista l'attimo dopo: “Così pallidi, così fragili, appena più di illusioni ottiche, sembra. Guardate ancora, sono spariti.”
Vertiginosa cancellazione delle emozioni violente che ci ha fatto vivere in tutto il romanzo tra morti, incidenti, suicidi ed omicidi, malattie degenerative e processi persi, eventi sempre ricoperti dal velo deformante dell'acqua che scorre e dello sguardo verde veleno di Ariah, la vedova bianca.
August 3, 2018
3.5?
Le prime e le ultime cento pagine mi sono piaciute tantissimo. L’inizio è intrigante, affascinante, ammaliante e ricco di spunti interessanti. La fine, invece, è molto coinvolgente, ed anche appagante. Diciamo che la parte centrale della storia è stata un po’ noiosa, solo a tratti entusiasmante.
La vicenda prende inizio dal matrimonio tra Ariah e Gilbert. Il marito, a nemmeno ventiquattro ore dalla cerimonia, decide di buttarsi dalle cascate. La moglie, fin da subito, verrà chiamata la “vedova sposa delle cascate” e sarà immortalata in moltissime foto con un impermeabile giallo addosso, mentre aspetta che il corpo del marito ricompaia tra i flutti del fiume. È in questo contesto che la conosce Dick, un avvocato amico del titolare dell’albergo presso cui Ariah risiede.
E da qui, la storia della famiglia Burnaby inizia. Ci saranno liti e riappacificazioni, ma soprattutto tantissimo “non detto”. Ogni componente della famiglia presenta delle sue caratteristiche, delle sue idee, e spesso non le condivide con chi gli è accanto. Ariah rimane sempre una sorta di fortezza, Dick invece è costantemente in movimento, Chandler pensa tanto e legge troppo, Royall è attivissimo. Poco si sa di Juliet, se non verso la fine. Ed è proprio la fine che mi ha fatto mettere quattro stelle. Pensavo che il libro, dopo l’inizio interessantissimo, si fosse “adagiato” sulle dinamiche familiari, invece l’ultimo sprint è stato positivamente accolto.
Ci sono, come detto poco fa, le dinamiche familiari, i contrasti tra genitori e figli, i contrasti tra gente di estrazione diversa, le diatribe con la comunità di appartenenza, ma c’è anche molto altro: il problema dell’inquinamento dell’acqua e del terreno dovuto al boom economico nella zona delle Niagara Falls, il non voler vedere queste cose da parte di chi è direttamente interessato ai guadagni derivanti dalle industrie, L’accanita lotta di un avvocato per la giusta causa. E poi le storie singole, i piccoli problemi della vita quotidiana di un adolescente, o di un bambino, di una madre con tre figli. Insomma, c’è un po’ di tutto, in questo libro.
Mi aspettavo una scrittura costante un po’ più morbosa, non so come dire, un po’ più scura, quella che si può leggere nelle prime cento pagine, però il risultato non è certo male.
Libro letto per la All-Over-The-World Book Challenge ✈️, per gli Stati Uniti 🇺🇸 (Stato di New York)
Libro letto per la OWLs readathon 🦉 , per la Challenge di Erbologia, che consiste nel leggere un libro con titolo inerente la natura (mese: luglio/agosto 2018)
Le prime e le ultime cento pagine mi sono piaciute tantissimo. L’inizio è intrigante, affascinante, ammaliante e ricco di spunti interessanti. La fine, invece, è molto coinvolgente, ed anche appagante. Diciamo che la parte centrale della storia è stata un po’ noiosa, solo a tratti entusiasmante.
La vicenda prende inizio dal matrimonio tra Ariah e Gilbert. Il marito, a nemmeno ventiquattro ore dalla cerimonia, decide di buttarsi dalle cascate. La moglie, fin da subito, verrà chiamata la “vedova sposa delle cascate” e sarà immortalata in moltissime foto con un impermeabile giallo addosso, mentre aspetta che il corpo del marito ricompaia tra i flutti del fiume. È in questo contesto che la conosce Dick, un avvocato amico del titolare dell’albergo presso cui Ariah risiede.
E da qui, la storia della famiglia Burnaby inizia. Ci saranno liti e riappacificazioni, ma soprattutto tantissimo “non detto”. Ogni componente della famiglia presenta delle sue caratteristiche, delle sue idee, e spesso non le condivide con chi gli è accanto. Ariah rimane sempre una sorta di fortezza, Dick invece è costantemente in movimento, Chandler pensa tanto e legge troppo, Royall è attivissimo. Poco si sa di Juliet, se non verso la fine. Ed è proprio la fine che mi ha fatto mettere quattro stelle. Pensavo che il libro, dopo l’inizio interessantissimo, si fosse “adagiato” sulle dinamiche familiari, invece l’ultimo sprint è stato positivamente accolto.
Ci sono, come detto poco fa, le dinamiche familiari, i contrasti tra genitori e figli, i contrasti tra gente di estrazione diversa, le diatribe con la comunità di appartenenza, ma c’è anche molto altro: il problema dell’inquinamento dell’acqua e del terreno dovuto al boom economico nella zona delle Niagara Falls, il non voler vedere queste cose da parte di chi è direttamente interessato ai guadagni derivanti dalle industrie, L’accanita lotta di un avvocato per la giusta causa. E poi le storie singole, i piccoli problemi della vita quotidiana di un adolescente, o di un bambino, di una madre con tre figli. Insomma, c’è un po’ di tutto, in questo libro.
Mi aspettavo una scrittura costante un po’ più morbosa, non so come dire, un po’ più scura, quella che si può leggere nelle prime cento pagine, però il risultato non è certo male.
Libro letto per la All-Over-The-World Book Challenge ✈️, per gli Stati Uniti 🇺🇸 (Stato di New York)
Libro letto per la OWLs readathon 🦉 , per la Challenge di Erbologia, che consiste nel leggere un libro con titolo inerente la natura (mese: luglio/agosto 2018)
April 11, 2021
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.
The book is told during three time periods-- my favorite is the first but taken as a whole, it was still a rewarding read.
February 15, 2015
E’ stato il mio primo incontro con Joyce Carol Oates e non sarà l’ultimo. Leggere questo libro è stato al tempo stesso terribile e intrigante come fare un viaggio in nave sul percorso navigabile lungo il fiume Niagara.
Le Cascate del Niagara: un maestoso fenomeno della natura, di una potenza impetuosa e travolgente tale che gli animi di chi si trova a Niagara Falls vengono attirati, in preda a una terrificante forza ipnotica, a perdersi nella nebbia uguale a quella formata da miliardi di gocce che si alzano dalla roboante massa d’acqua che cade, da cui si odono suoni come le voci delle sirene di Ulisse.
Una nebbia che avvolge le esistenze dei protagonisti, la famiglia Barnaby, formata da Ariah e Dirk e dai loro figli Chandler, Royall e Juliet. Ariah è il personaggio dominante il romanzo dalla prima all’ultima pagina, la sposa vedova delle Cascate, un personaggio controverso; nel bene e nel male ha esercitato su di me un fascino paragonabile a quello delle cascate. Ci sono momenti in cui ho pensato: “è pazza, insensibile, ottusa…”, poi c’è stato sempre qualcosa che mi ha fatto cambiare idea e l’ho vista sotto una luce diversa. Ho oscillato nel corso della lettura tra il fastidio verso questa donna all’apparenza forte ma forse troppo fragile e l’ammirazione, anche se ha predominato il primo. Ariah è una donna che ha delle ossessioni che dominano i suoi pensieri e le sue azioni. “Dio non fa altro che giocare a dadi con l’universo. E noi non possiamo farci niente” insegna ai figli, che crescono isolati dal mondo all’ombra dell’ingombrante figura materna che sembra fagocitarli.
L’atmosfera che ho respirato leggendo il libro è claustrofobica, magistralmente creata da una scrittura anch’essa ipnotica come le Cascate del Niagara. Il malessere che mi ha accompagnato nella lettura delle vicende di questa “famiglia maledetta” si è dissolto, così come la nebbia che si forma vicino alle cascate si dirada con l’alzarsi del sole, quando, nel finale, sono comparsi arcobaleni sopra il fiume. “Leggeri, fragilissimi, poco più di un’illusione ottica”. Ma c’erano. E’ come se tutto si fosse improvvisamente rischiarato.
Le Cascate del Niagara: un maestoso fenomeno della natura, di una potenza impetuosa e travolgente tale che gli animi di chi si trova a Niagara Falls vengono attirati, in preda a una terrificante forza ipnotica, a perdersi nella nebbia uguale a quella formata da miliardi di gocce che si alzano dalla roboante massa d’acqua che cade, da cui si odono suoni come le voci delle sirene di Ulisse.
Una nebbia che avvolge le esistenze dei protagonisti, la famiglia Barnaby, formata da Ariah e Dirk e dai loro figli Chandler, Royall e Juliet. Ariah è il personaggio dominante il romanzo dalla prima all’ultima pagina, la sposa vedova delle Cascate, un personaggio controverso; nel bene e nel male ha esercitato su di me un fascino paragonabile a quello delle cascate. Ci sono momenti in cui ho pensato: “è pazza, insensibile, ottusa…”, poi c’è stato sempre qualcosa che mi ha fatto cambiare idea e l’ho vista sotto una luce diversa. Ho oscillato nel corso della lettura tra il fastidio verso questa donna all’apparenza forte ma forse troppo fragile e l’ammirazione, anche se ha predominato il primo. Ariah è una donna che ha delle ossessioni che dominano i suoi pensieri e le sue azioni. “Dio non fa altro che giocare a dadi con l’universo. E noi non possiamo farci niente” insegna ai figli, che crescono isolati dal mondo all’ombra dell’ingombrante figura materna che sembra fagocitarli.
L’atmosfera che ho respirato leggendo il libro è claustrofobica, magistralmente creata da una scrittura anch’essa ipnotica come le Cascate del Niagara. Il malessere che mi ha accompagnato nella lettura delle vicende di questa “famiglia maledetta” si è dissolto, così come la nebbia che si forma vicino alle cascate si dirada con l’alzarsi del sole, quando, nel finale, sono comparsi arcobaleni sopra il fiume. “Leggeri, fragilissimi, poco più di un’illusione ottica”. Ma c’erano. E’ come se tutto si fosse improvvisamente rischiarato.
April 27, 2010
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 false. I hope each time that I read a fictional work to be transported and to feel in some way that the characters might be real people. This absolutely does not happen in "The Falls." Quite the opposite happens, again and again I thought the author had no human understanding. The second problem is that it is in sorry need of an edit. For example, there were way too many descriptions of the main character's eye color of "gasoline green." Annoying both for the repetition and because it is a terrible description. There were many instances of pages introducing a place or character, and then a few pages later a sentence or paragraph introducing them again. What I surmise is that no one was willing to read the book from first to last page, and therefore would not catch the redundancies.
If you have not yet started reading this book please don't! Life is too short to waste it on bad writing.
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 false. I hope each time that I read a fictional work to be transported and to feel in some way that the characters might be real people. This absolutely does not happen in "The Falls." Quite the opposite happens, again and again I thought the author had no human understanding. The second problem is that it is in sorry need of an edit. For example, there were way too many descriptions of the main character's eye color of "gasoline green." Annoying both for the repetition and because it is a terrible description. There were many instances of pages introducing a place or character, and then a few pages later a sentence or paragraph introducing them again. What I surmise is that no one was willing to read the book from first to last page, and therefore would not catch the redundancies.
If you have not yet started reading this book please don't! Life is too short to waste it on bad writing.
September 20, 2008
Synopsis
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.
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.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 10, 2009
JCO is one of those writers you either love or hate. I happen to love most everything she does; "The Falls" is no exception, although I really started to get bored with her story set-up. Once she finally got the ball rolling (about 60 pages into it) it was cinematic in scope and really ranks high among her best works. Set in the 40's through the 70's in (duh) Niagara Falls, NY, "The Falls" describes the falls' eerie, almost preternatural effect on a family, practically destroying it. I found myself skim-reading through much of the repetitive flashback dialog, but at the same time the vision this novel left me with was cinematic in scope (I kept imagining it as it would play "on the big screen").
May 19, 2020
Romanzo di intensità rara. Parte con l’incipit più emozionante, coinvolgente e adrenalinico che io abbia mai letto, e per tutta la prima parte si mantiene a livelli di grande tensione narrativa e pura perfezione letteraria. Prosegue assestandosi su ottimi livelli e si conclude con garbata serenità, schiarendo gli orizzonti ma senza eccedere con un happy end zuccheroso.
Storia di una famiglia insolita e insieme storia di un luogo insolito, Niagara: combinazione unica al mondo di bellezza naturale, boom turistico e boom industriale con conseguenti devastazioni ambientali, un luogo capace di rappresentare, in breve tempo e in pochi km quadrati, la storia e il destino del mondo moderno.
È una Oates in gran forma, ispirata: non c’è una parola fuori posto, non c’è una frase che non sia degna di ammirazione e di riflessione. Opera decisamente sostanziosa e avvincente, non le manca nessuna qualità: scrittura limpida e scorrevolissima e tuttavia non priva di personalità; valida testimonianza storica (quella del disastro ecologico di Niagara con scandali e processi è una storia vera); penetrazione psicologica, personaggi a tutto tondo, il coraggio e la franchezza di raccontare le relazioni umane e familiari come sono (complesse, stridenti, mutevoli) senza ipocrisie; intuizioni poetiche, dimensione narrativa “alta”, quasi epica. Si può obbiettare che la trama è talvolta poco verosimile, ma il lettore è talmente travolto dalla bellezza impetuosa del romanzo che a malapena se ne accorge.
La Oates è una grande scrittrice; purtroppo soffre della sindrome, assai diffusa, devo-scrivere-un-libro-all’anno-sennò-muoio, e così fra i tanti bei romanzi che ha scritto ce n’è anche, secondo me, di malriusciti, di insignificanti, di banali.
Questo, credo, è il suo capolavoro.
E appena finito vien voglia di ricominciarlo da capo.
Storia di una famiglia insolita e insieme storia di un luogo insolito, Niagara: combinazione unica al mondo di bellezza naturale, boom turistico e boom industriale con conseguenti devastazioni ambientali, un luogo capace di rappresentare, in breve tempo e in pochi km quadrati, la storia e il destino del mondo moderno.
È una Oates in gran forma, ispirata: non c’è una parola fuori posto, non c’è una frase che non sia degna di ammirazione e di riflessione. Opera decisamente sostanziosa e avvincente, non le manca nessuna qualità: scrittura limpida e scorrevolissima e tuttavia non priva di personalità; valida testimonianza storica (quella del disastro ecologico di Niagara con scandali e processi è una storia vera); penetrazione psicologica, personaggi a tutto tondo, il coraggio e la franchezza di raccontare le relazioni umane e familiari come sono (complesse, stridenti, mutevoli) senza ipocrisie; intuizioni poetiche, dimensione narrativa “alta”, quasi epica. Si può obbiettare che la trama è talvolta poco verosimile, ma il lettore è talmente travolto dalla bellezza impetuosa del romanzo che a malapena se ne accorge.
La Oates è una grande scrittrice; purtroppo soffre della sindrome, assai diffusa, devo-scrivere-un-libro-all’anno-sennò-muoio, e così fra i tanti bei romanzi che ha scritto ce n’è anche, secondo me, di malriusciti, di insignificanti, di banali.
Questo, credo, è il suo capolavoro.
E appena finito vien voglia di ricominciarlo da capo.
May 30, 2021
1.
This is the kind of story I expect to see a film of someday. It could only be a disappointment. Or perhaps it would be an HBO mini-series. Either way it would be a disappointment.
I can imagine critics praising the film version's loyalty to the text. All the plot points would be there. The generations would pass from hour to hour or episode to episode, and it would become Ariah's tale from beginning to end. Ariah would be the marquee part for a single godlike actor (some future generation's Streep), or three actors playing Ariah at three stages of her life.
It would stop being a tale of memory. It wouldn't be a tale told from multiple slippery perspectives. It would be a telling of The Falls without the poetry of Joyce Carol Oates. It wouldn't really be The Falls.
This big screen version. This small screen version. These versions should never exist.
I fear they will.
2 .
What is a Burnaby? Burn - a - by?
Are the Burnaby's cursed?
Are they charmed? And what of their guilt?
And what of their innocence?
3.
Reading The Falls put me on a bar stool with a martini in hand, or sat me in a wicker chair on a veranda with a mint julep, or on a ratty old sofa in a cathedral ceilinged study with a mug of tea. And with me was Joyce Carol Oates spinning a tale off the top of her head. She'd been reading books about Love Canal, she'd been visiting Niagara Falls, going back to the roar and the mist of her childhood, she'd been dreaming of suicides and murders and chemical evils, and she had a whole family to tell me about. A mother and father and father. And a son of two fathers or maybe just one. And a son of a mother and a daughter of that mother, whose ethereal presence was a balm and a reminder of the father she never knew. And a puppy turned old dog to wiggle waggle his tail through the tale of this family, and this place and this time in her head. And so she begins at the Falls and over a night in the pub, or an evening on the veranda, or a day on the ratty sofa, she treats me to the Burnaby's, and I fall in love with them, and long for the Falls themselves, and fall in love with Ms. Oates and the way she spins a tale, hypnotizing me with her dazzling authorial stream of consciousness.
(Should I never read another word from her? Should I take this gift and not challenge the love she's planted in me? I don't know that I dare go on to her other works. Yet I want to, of course. Yet I have been daunted before. I didn't, however, expect to be daunted again)
And my copy of the Falls? When next I stand at the Falls, I know what I will have in my hand and what I will release into those waters. It won't be a sacrifice. It will be a homecoming.
This is the kind of story I expect to see a film of someday. It could only be a disappointment. Or perhaps it would be an HBO mini-series. Either way it would be a disappointment.
I can imagine critics praising the film version's loyalty to the text. All the plot points would be there. The generations would pass from hour to hour or episode to episode, and it would become Ariah's tale from beginning to end. Ariah would be the marquee part for a single godlike actor (some future generation's Streep), or three actors playing Ariah at three stages of her life.
It would stop being a tale of memory. It wouldn't be a tale told from multiple slippery perspectives. It would be a telling of The Falls without the poetry of Joyce Carol Oates. It wouldn't really be The Falls.
This big screen version. This small screen version. These versions should never exist.
I fear they will.
2 .
What is a Burnaby? Burn - a - by?
Are the Burnaby's cursed?
Are they charmed? And what of their guilt?
And what of their innocence?
3.
Reading The Falls put me on a bar stool with a martini in hand, or sat me in a wicker chair on a veranda with a mint julep, or on a ratty old sofa in a cathedral ceilinged study with a mug of tea. And with me was Joyce Carol Oates spinning a tale off the top of her head. She'd been reading books about Love Canal, she'd been visiting Niagara Falls, going back to the roar and the mist of her childhood, she'd been dreaming of suicides and murders and chemical evils, and she had a whole family to tell me about. A mother and father and father. And a son of two fathers or maybe just one. And a son of a mother and a daughter of that mother, whose ethereal presence was a balm and a reminder of the father she never knew. And a puppy turned old dog to wiggle waggle his tail through the tale of this family, and this place and this time in her head. And so she begins at the Falls and over a night in the pub, or an evening on the veranda, or a day on the ratty sofa, she treats me to the Burnaby's, and I fall in love with them, and long for the Falls themselves, and fall in love with Ms. Oates and the way she spins a tale, hypnotizing me with her dazzling authorial stream of consciousness.
(Should I never read another word from her? Should I take this gift and not challenge the love she's planted in me? I don't know that I dare go on to her other works. Yet I want to, of course. Yet I have been daunted before. I didn't, however, expect to be daunted again)
And my copy of the Falls? When next I stand at the Falls, I know what I will have in my hand and what I will release into those waters. It won't be a sacrifice. It will be a homecoming.
December 15, 2010
So much book and so little story! Pages and pages and pages of words that lead nowhere. Characters that only the Author could love (or even like).
The history of the Love Canal lawsuit was interesting and that part of the story elevated the rating of this book. One feels for Ariah's children...stuck with a crazy, nerotic, insane mother. These are the only two elements of this book that evoke any feeling or reaction at all.
Ariah! Here's a woman who should have stayed at home with her Pastor father and lived the life of a spinster. This woman destroyed everyone she "loved". She was neurotic, self-centered, selfish. She removed herself from the World. She rejected & threw her husband out of the house, all the while telling everyone he deserted her. There's nothing about this woman to like and one wonders how anyone could like/love her. Poor Dirk! Poor kids!
The rest of the book is nothing more than pages and pages of Nothing.
The history of the Love Canal lawsuit was interesting and that part of the story elevated the rating of this book. One feels for Ariah's children...stuck with a crazy, nerotic, insane mother. These are the only two elements of this book that evoke any feeling or reaction at all.
Ariah! Here's a woman who should have stayed at home with her Pastor father and lived the life of a spinster. This woman destroyed everyone she "loved". She was neurotic, self-centered, selfish. She removed herself from the World. She rejected & threw her husband out of the house, all the while telling everyone he deserted her. There's nothing about this woman to like and one wonders how anyone could like/love her. Poor Dirk! Poor kids!
The rest of the book is nothing more than pages and pages of Nothing.
May 19, 2025
This is a long complicated story about complicated people. JCO just keeps turning out books. I especially like her short stories, but this long book is like several short stories that are all tied together. It is impressive.
August 13, 2017
Quizás una de las cinco mejores novelas que he leído en toda mi vida. Joyce Carol Oates tiene muchos libros, pero yo creo que se merece el Nobel de Literatura sólo por esta maravilla indescriptible que es The falls.
August 30, 2009
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 characters was too much for me. Penelope Fitzgerald once said, "I always feel the reader is very insulted by being told too much." Apparently, this is not a concern shared by Joyce Carol Oates. I waved the white flag around page 80. Perhaps if I had hung around longer, the Ariah character might have started to make sense and maybe I would have found that Oates fleshed out more complex reasons for her husband's suicide other than that he was gay in the 50s. In a pretty cool epigraph, Oates seems to be setting the stage for a mysterious suicide - that the Falls will cast a spell on an otherwise unlikely jumper. Instead her closeted gay husband premeditates his death in the hotel room, leaves a note, and makes a beeline for the falls. How uninteresting.
August 14, 2013
تداهمك الفكرة التالية في أول عشرين صفحة فقط من الرواية:
عروس الشلالات (آريا)؛ التي جاءت يوم زفافها لتمضية شهر العسل في فندق بمدينة شلالات نياجرا، مدينة شهر العسل الأولى في العالم، لكنها استيقظت صباحًا لتجد زوجها مختفيًا، وبعد البحث وجدته انتحر بإلقاء نفسه من أعلى الجسر المطوِّق للشلالات!
ما الذي يجعل عريسًا ينتحر بعد يوم زواج واحد!؟
رغم البداية المشوقة، لم تستمر الرواية على نفس الوتيرة. هي -كما ستقرأ على غلافها الخلفي- "رواية أجيال"، وبها جزء تاريخي كبير عن أزمة التلوث الكيميائي التي تتعرض لها مدينة شلالات نياجرا، وعن كفاح الأهالي ضدها ومحاولاتهم حماية مدينتهم الجميلة.
الرواية على مستوى الأمريكيين رائعة، وتلك هي مشكلتي الكبرى مع الأدب المترجم، فهو في معظم الأحوال أدب إقليمي لا يُلمّ بتفاصيله غير مواطني منشأه، وقد يتعذّر علينا -الغرباء- فهم مشاكله أو حتى التعاطف معها.
(جويس كارول أوتس) مبدعة في وصف الشخصيات وتحليل تصرفاتها، وطريقتها في السرد تنوعت بين (الفلاش فورورد) و(الفلاش باك وورد) كثيرًا، لكن يُحسب لها أنها لم تصبني بالتشتت ولو لمرة واحدة!
عروس الشلالات (آريا)؛ التي جاءت يوم زفافها لتمضية شهر العسل في فندق بمدينة شلالات نياجرا، مدينة شهر العسل الأولى في العالم، لكنها استيقظت صباحًا لتجد زوجها مختفيًا، وبعد البحث وجدته انتحر بإلقاء نفسه من أعلى الجسر المطوِّق للشلالات!
ما الذي يجعل عريسًا ينتحر بعد يوم زواج واحد!؟
رغم البداية المشوقة، لم تستمر الرواية على نفس الوتيرة. هي -كما ستقرأ على غلافها الخلفي- "رواية أجيال"، وبها جزء تاريخي كبير عن أزمة التلوث الكيميائي التي تتعرض لها مدينة شلالات نياجرا، وعن كفاح الأهالي ضدها ومحاولاتهم حماية مدينتهم الجميلة.
الرواية على مستوى الأمريكيين رائعة، وتلك هي مشكلتي الكبرى مع الأدب المترجم، فهو في معظم الأحوال أدب إقليمي لا يُلمّ بتفاصيله غير مواطني منشأه، وقد يتعذّر علينا -الغرباء- فهم مشاكله أو حتى التعاطف معها.
(جويس كارول أوتس) مبدعة في وصف الشخصيات وتحليل تصرفاتها، وطريقتها في السرد تنوعت بين (الفلاش فورورد) و(الفلاش باك وورد) كثيرًا، لكن يُحسب لها أنها لم تصبني بالتشتت ولو لمرة واحدة!
February 12, 2023
Je voulais découvrir cet auteur depuis longtemps et mon seul regret c’est de ne pas l’avoir fait plus tôt !
Les Chutes est un roman poignant et d’une richesse psychologique folle. Ariah Littrell se réveille le matin de sa lune de miel, après sa nuit de noces et une gueule de bois. Étrange combinaison. Elle se réveille l’esprit embrouillé et l’âme meurtrie, mais prête à tenir son rôle de jeune mariée. Hélas, son mari vient de se jeter dans les chutes du Niagara, pour des raisons qu’elle ne connaîtra jamais, mais que nous, lecteurs privilégiés, nous verrons poindre furtivement au détour d’une phrase.
Ariah est donc déjà veuve. Veuve, mais bientôt remariée, car elle tape dans l’œil d’un riche et bel avocat amateur de femmes.
Trop beau pour être vrai ? La jeune héroïne, qui a bien failli rester vieille fille avant de devenir veuve, trouve l’amour d’une manière inattendue, et les trente années suivantes qui nous sont relatées sont d’un intérêt grandissant. L’écriture est belle, l’analyse des personnages pertinente, fouillée, leurs profils sont acérés et d’une finesse rare. On assiste à la vie d’une femme, à son évolution, à la fatalité qui l’a frappe. Les chutes du Niagara sont un personnage omniprésent, tout tourne autour de ce lieu fascinant. La vie d’Ariah suit son cours immuable, tragique, sans possibilité de détour, tel le Niagara.
Un portrait de femme qui m’aurait royalement ennuyée sans cette écriture sublime et ces personnages complexes.
Une magnifique découverte, je vais m’empresser de lire d’autres romans de Joyce Carol Oates.
Les Chutes est un roman poignant et d’une richesse psychologique folle. Ariah Littrell se réveille le matin de sa lune de miel, après sa nuit de noces et une gueule de bois. Étrange combinaison. Elle se réveille l’esprit embrouillé et l’âme meurtrie, mais prête à tenir son rôle de jeune mariée. Hélas, son mari vient de se jeter dans les chutes du Niagara, pour des raisons qu’elle ne connaîtra jamais, mais que nous, lecteurs privilégiés, nous verrons poindre furtivement au détour d’une phrase.
Ariah est donc déjà veuve. Veuve, mais bientôt remariée, car elle tape dans l’œil d’un riche et bel avocat amateur de femmes.
Trop beau pour être vrai ? La jeune héroïne, qui a bien failli rester vieille fille avant de devenir veuve, trouve l’amour d’une manière inattendue, et les trente années suivantes qui nous sont relatées sont d’un intérêt grandissant. L’écriture est belle, l’analyse des personnages pertinente, fouillée, leurs profils sont acérés et d’une finesse rare. On assiste à la vie d’une femme, à son évolution, à la fatalité qui l’a frappe. Les chutes du Niagara sont un personnage omniprésent, tout tourne autour de ce lieu fascinant. La vie d’Ariah suit son cours immuable, tragique, sans possibilité de détour, tel le Niagara.
Un portrait de femme qui m’aurait royalement ennuyée sans cette écriture sublime et ces personnages complexes.
Une magnifique découverte, je vais m’empresser de lire d’autres romans de Joyce Carol Oates.
March 10, 2011
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 barefoot.
Nina is described as the Woman in Black in the "Before" chapter in part two. "She was the Woman in Black. She was observing him, she was waiting to waylay him. She was patient, relentless. Waiting for him...." Dirk forgot her name and "imagined Death." Maybe the woman in black in the cemetery scene is Death, maybe Royall makes love with Death, but I prefer to think it is Nina twenty years later. On page 286 JCO writes "And there was the woman in black waiting for him...." On the next page she writes "Royall realized that the woman must have been waiting for him." The Woman in Black in Part 2 too closely parallels the woman in black in Part 3 for it to be a coincidence.
I really wanted Ms. Oates to confirm this when I met her at the book signing after her reading at the CHF. However, she did not. Her concern was elsewhere, and I am left to speculate, as I frequently am in the aftermath of her novels.
Nina is described as the Woman in Black in the "Before" chapter in part two. "She was the Woman in Black. She was observing him, she was waiting to waylay him. She was patient, relentless. Waiting for him...." Dirk forgot her name and "imagined Death." Maybe the woman in black in the cemetery scene is Death, maybe Royall makes love with Death, but I prefer to think it is Nina twenty years later. On page 286 JCO writes "And there was the woman in black waiting for him...." On the next page she writes "Royall realized that the woman must have been waiting for him." The Woman in Black in Part 2 too closely parallels the woman in black in Part 3 for it to be a coincidence.
I really wanted Ms. Oates to confirm this when I met her at the book signing after her reading at the CHF. However, she did not. Her concern was elsewhere, and I am left to speculate, as I frequently am in the aftermath of her novels.
June 2, 2021
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 Oates elements are present here except for rape. (I don't think that counts as a plot spoiler unless that's important for you.) What's missing is any particularly sympathetic character or real cohesion in the story; it felt like a pastiche of plot threads that never came together. There were themes such as latent homosexuality and toxic waste dumps before people knew what these were but most of it just felt half-baked to me. If you haven't read this yet, you really haven't missed out but if you're forced, it isn't a particularly painful time-killer either.
November 29, 2012
2 1/2 y sentimientos encontrados con esta novela de Oates. La cosa está bastante clara: si no lo hubiera escrito ella, probablemente no habría tenido demasiado interés por el argumento de esta novela que repite muchos tópicos de su obra, y sin duda se me habría hecho mucho más cuesta arriba su lectura... pero es que esta mujer tiene algo en su forma de narrar que te atrapa, incluso cuando, como en este caso, algunos personajes te repelen y otros te parecen bastante insulsos. Aunque, por supuesto, también los hay que embrujan, como sucede especialmente con Juliet y Stonecrop en la parte final de la historia.
En cualquier caso, una tiene la sensación de que la trama no es nada del otro mundo y de que se podría haber contado lo mismo con menos profusión de palabras... aunque llegues a olvidarlo atrapado por el don de la palabra de la autora. ¿Saturación de Oates? Sólo en una mínima parte, pues.
En cualquier caso, una tiene la sensación de que la trama no es nada del otro mundo y de que se podría haber contado lo mismo con menos profusión de palabras... aunque llegues a olvidarlo atrapado por el don de la palabra de la autora. ¿Saturación de Oates? Sólo en una mínima parte, pues.
March 25, 2012
This book follows the life of a woman haunted by the rejection of her first spouse and her eternal fear that she will be rejected by anyone who is drawn into her circle of life. Ariah lives her life almost as a fugitive, constantly looking over her shoulder, reading into things said as proof that she is unworthy of affection. She becomes brittle and nearly unapproachable. By protecting herself, she seems to live life in the shadows, barely participating, but an influence nonetheless.
June 16, 2012
Un'altra famiglia americana affetta da nevrosi, scrittura di grande impatto che tiene incollati alla pagina. Questo libro colpisce, travolge e ipnotizza esattamente come fanno le cascate del Niagara. Anche quando il libro � chiuso, la storia rimane come pure i personaggi
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