The Falls CD : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: The last great generation in a different light
Review: For all the hype given to the Last Great Generation, Oates squarely demonstrates the real complexity of those times in an unsentimental and straightforward manner. No this isn't about WWII, but it is about an American culture of much more than the simplicities of the 50's and 60's that are stereotypically spewed out all the time. The characters are well drawn and the story has a stop-and-go pace that fits well with the people and the place. A great writer.

Rating:
Summary: Good - If you can get beyond the lack of editing!
Review: Having read every book Ms. Oates has written, I found this to be no less 'dark' and thought provoking as her writing tends to be. However, finding spelling and grammatical errors virtually every 10 pages completely spoiled the book for me. It was so rampant I found myself editing the book instead of reading it. One would expect the publisher of this book to have edited it properly, given the caliber of the author and the price her audience pays to read her books.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't "fall" down
Review: I couldn't stop reading this one.

Oates is the kins of author who can get into the innermost feelings of her characters, as no other authr can; she explores the hidden aspects of personality and meakes her reader think deeply about what he or she is reading. In all the years I've been reading JCO, no other book (except maybe Foxfire) has touched me as deeply as The Falls has. Right from the first page, the reader is sucked in (no pun intended). Like the waterfalls, around which this book is centered, this book has a magnetic effect.

In 1950, Ariah, a newlywed, goes on honeymoon with her husband to Niagara Falls. While there, Gilbert Erskine throws himself into The Falls. While searching for the body, Ariah meets Dick Burnaby, a locally well-known lawyer, who she falls in love with and marries. Together they have three children.

By 1962, however, things change. Dick becomes wrapped up in a lawsuit involving a young woman and the death of her dauther due to radiation poisoning. He becomes so deeply involved, in fact, that he ends up ruining his professional reputation, as well as his marriage. How the details of a case, combined with the characters Joyce Carol Oates presents to her readers are only a small part of this fine, wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: Great Reading!
Review: I read most of Joyce Carol Oates books and this by far is the best I have read.

It is the story of a family and the turbulent 50, 60, and 70's. It is also the story of love and redemption, parenthood, political issues and so on. It is complex and it studies each character quite well.

It took me only 3 days to read and it is a very long novel. Please read it. This is one excellent author.

The story ended and I felt a satisfaction with it how it did. Good Work, Ms Oates. Will make an outstanding movie.

Rating:
Summary: An "opera" of a novel
Review: I was sorely disappointed last week when the Nobel Prize for Literature, handicapped to fall to a woman, missed Joyce Carol Oates once again. As wayward as her work may often be, I can't think of another novelist who says so much with such skill so frequently. Oates' sheer volume doesn't necessarily make her great. But it is astonishing how consistently terrific she is across the vast landscape of words she has thrown at us. The Falls is one of her grand operatic works: arias that go on too long, scenes heightened to melodramatic unbelievability, characters (including the heroine here) painted in such hot or cold colors that they are hyper-real - and all of that is a collective good thing. I really rolled through (and in) this one. (And the amazing thing about Oates is that she has so many more that I haven't yet read. She could stop writing now, and I'd be set for life, but I hope she keeps turning them out.)

Rating:
Summary: Good, but missing something....
Review: I wish they had half ratings, because this is more of a 3.5 book. The story moves at a prety fast pace, which is good, and if you can get by some of the more outrageous parts of the book (the marraige of the main characters, for instance). But unlike "We Were The Mulvaneys", this one never seems to catch fire. I think it's because the characters aren't really that likeable; I never really cared what would happen to them. And the last third, where the children are grown, has no heart. Overall, while interesting, it certainly wasn't a page-turner.

Rating:
Summary: Ms. Oates goes a little overboard, but worth the ride
Review: If you've ever been to Niagara Falls and felt overwhelmed by the brute force of the rushing water, imagining the awfulness of unwittingly falling in a bit upstream where it's too late to extricate yourself from your own downfall, then you will feel some empathy for Ariah on the morning after her wedding day when she discovers her new husband missing. Chances are this may be the most sorrow you'll feel for this woman whose neck you'll want to wring more often than not. What a woman of admirable and shameful traits; self-knowledge and cluelessness.

I loved this novel. What a movie it will make! Play cast the characters as you read it. I'm old enough to remember Love Canal, but what a history lesson for the younger generation (this is not the forum for a political rant).

Yes, the novel goes in several directions - is Ariah, being damned, responsible for the fall (man's greed)? Or is she just a simple human being, like the rest of us flawed mothers, subject to drawing incorrect conclusions (she couldn't have known her first husband was gay) that end up having the force of gravity that almost takes several additional family members over the falls. Still, through the grace of God, the children, though damaged by Ariah and her groundless need for keeping family secrets, have their own free will - and boy do they use it - ensuring a smooth ending to a bumpy ride


Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Put It Down
Review: The Falls continues to haunt me. Joyce Carol Oates has always been a masterful storyteller, and she has outdone herself with this book. The saga of Ariah, a complex and troubled woman, who loses both her husbands in sudden and strange ways, is completely engrossing. If you like an excellent story, with descriptions that make you feel like you are a character in the book yourself, you must read The Falls.

Rating:
Summary: A gripping novel marred by sloppy writing
Review: The jacket of the novel proclaims, "A stunning achievement from Joyce Carol Oates, 'One of the great artistic forces of our time." (The Nation) "It alone places Joyce Carol Oates definitively in the company of the Great American novelists." The generally acerbic Kirkus Reviews wrote a flattering review: "It's her best ever and a masterpiece." So I picked up the bulky book with great expectation of experiencing the joy of reading a good book. Alas, I was quite startled by the sloppy sentences. She says about Dirk Burnaby, "He, Dirk Burnaby, whom women adored, and some of them happily married rich women, ignored by this woman!" "The tall gaunt house in Palmyra, New York, mud-colored brick and rotted shingleboards in the roof and a congregation of less than two hundred people, most of them middle-aged and older, to whom the young minister must 'prove' himself." Did the author mean fewer than two hundred people? About Douglas she writes: "He was proud husband and father of two-year-old girl twins." Did she mean twin girls, not girl twins? Joyce uses nouns as adjectives, and adjectives as if they were adverbs. Her sentences grated upon my ears. The novel is littered with sentences that run almost for ever, leaving readers jaded. I had to stop frequently to follow the author's chain of thoughts. Oh, what is the author trying to say? Often I had the distinct impression that she was trying to enter the Guiness Book of Records for writing the longest sentence in print: His back bone was snapped, and snapped, and snapped like the dried wishbone of a turkey clutched at by giggling children and his body was flung lifeless as a rag doll at the foot of the Horseshoe Falls, lifted and dropped and lifted again amid the rocks and sucked down amid churning water and winking miniature rain drops, lost now to the appalled sight of the sole witness at the railing at Terrapin point - though shortly it would be regurgitated from the foot of The Falls and swept downriver three-quarters of a mile past the Whirlpool Rapids and into the Devil's Whirlpool where it would be sucked down from sight and trapped in the spiraling water - the broken body would spin like a deranged moon in orbit until, in His mercy, or His whimsy, God would grant the miracle of putrifaction to inflate the body with gases, floating it to the surface of the foaming gyre, and release." Wow! I found myself longing for the elegant prose of V. S. Naipaul or Joseph Conrad. This could have been a wonderful book if only the editor had wielded her/his pencil diligently. Too bad. I found the story quite gripping. But the writing is flawed, like a face with beautiful, even angelic, features but marred by acne and pocks.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Niagara Flow
Review: This is one of my top books this year. I loved the story(ies), the characters and the setting. Ms. Oates characters are beautifully defined with enough room to form one's own mind with persoanl fill in here and there. I could see these characters. I often felt like I was in the room with them (behind a curtain, of course). It is a terrific saga with hidden innuendos and opinions that the reader learns about in its appropriate time. I learned a lot about the Niagara Falls area. Having been a visitor there once, it expanded my own idea of the place-its history, socio-economics, its evolution from an old, grand tourist destination to a modern one and the environs. I learned about struggle. I was reminded that often where we sometimes believe someone's heart is, is not really where it is at all. I was reminded that one's life can change in a flash, not only one's circumstances, but one's entire belief system. And again, how quickly it will or can change again. And through it all am reminded how humans cope, and how differently they cope. The struggles, the triumphs, the pain, the joy were all here. I liked every one of these characters. I felt like I knew each one, and in fact wanted to know each one. Ms.Oates led the pace of the story well. Her ending was appropriate and left room for more. I highly recommend this book, and am delighted that Ms. Oates is a premiere American writer who I know I can look forward to reading more of her works in the years ahead. Thank you, Ms. Oates for a great book, well written and so well crafted.