The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates

From the Publisher

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).

The New York Times - Terrence Rafferty

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

The Washington Post - Jane Ciabattari

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

Publishers Weekly

Oates is not only on her authentically rendered home ground in this sprawling novel set in the city of Niagara Falls during the 1950s, she is also writing at the top of her form. Her febrile prose is especially appropriate to a story as turbulent as the tumultuous waters that have claimed many lives over the years. Widowed on her wedding night when her new husband, a young minister and latent homosexual, throws himself into the falls, Ariah Littrell, the plain, awkward daughter of a minister, henceforth considers herself damned. Her bleak future becomes miraculously bright when Dirk Burnaby, a handsome, wealthy bon vivant with an altruistic heart, falls in love with the media-dubbed Widow-Bride. Their rapturous happiness is shadowed only by Ariah's illogical conviction over the years that Dirk will leave her and their three children someday. Her unreasonable fear becomes self-fulfilling when her increasingly unstable behavior, combined with Dirk's obsessed but chaste involvement with Nina Olshaker, a young mother who enlists his help in alerting the city fathers to the pestilential conditions in the area later to be known as Love Canal, opens a chasm in their marriage. His gentle heart inspired by a need for justice, Dirk takes on the powerful, corrupt politicians, his former peers and pals, in a disastrous lawsuit that ruins him socially and financially and results in his death. Oates adroitly addresses the material of this "first" class action lawsuit and makes the story fresh and immediate. "In the end, all drama is about family," a character muses, and while the narrative occasionally lapses into melodrama in elucidating this theme, Oates spins a haunting story in which nature and humans are equally rapacious and self-destructive. Agent, Jane Hawkins. Author tour. (Sept. 16) Forecast: This is likely to be one of Oates's biggest sellers-its heft, striking setting and sheer excellence should make it her highest-profile novel since Blonde. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

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

Kirkus Reviews

Oates (I Am No One You Know, 2003, etc.) painstakingly examines the impulse toward self-destruction-and the ways we find to heal ourselves. The story spans nearly 30 years, beginning in 1950 when newlywed Gilbert Erskine leaps into Niagara Falls to his death, forever traumatizing his bride Ariah, a "spinster" music teacher who had awkwardly stumbled into a marriage neither spouse wanted. The hallucinatory opening section traces Ariah's growing embitterment while introducing young attorney Dirk Burnaby, who impulsively comforts "the Widow-Bride of The Falls," just as impulsively proposes a year after Gilbert's demise-and is accepted. The Burnabys settle in Niagara Falls, produce three children, and keep their often volatile marriage together (despite Ariah's emotional instability and paranoia) until Dirk, moved by the passionate activism of a woman whose family is victimized by environmental poisoning, undertakes the first (1962) lawsuit against the chemical company that had dumped pollutants into Love Canal. The suit is dismissed, Dirk's high standing in the community is destroyed, and his suspicious death pushes Ariah deeper into withdrawal and resentment. The narrative then focuses in turns on her children. Scholarly, introverted Chandler, who has long known he is his mother's firstborn but not her favorite, becomes a science teacher, and eventually the dogged pursuer of the buried facts about his father's obsession and fate. "Golden Boy" Royall struggles to escape the burdens of being loved too easily and achieving too little. And their sister Juliet, who inherits Ariah's musical gifts, must resist a deathward momentum given stunning metaphoric form in the Burnaby family story of adaredevil tightrope walker, and the beckoning "voices" that seem to speak from within the roaring waters of the Falls. This big, enthralling novel recaptures the gift for Dreiserian realism that distinguishes such Oates triumphs as them, What I Lived For, and We Were the Mulvaneys. It's her best ever-and a masterpiece. Author tour

Product Details

• Reading Group Guide
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Reading Group Guide

Is a relationship borne of a tragedy destined to the same fate? How much power does a place have over its inhabitants? Can a family, once unraveled, become whole again? These are the questions at the heart of The Falls, as Joyce Carol Oates unfolds the story of a family who must free themselves of the past in order to find solace and redemption.

It is June 1950, and Ariah Erskine is on the brink of a new life. Niagara Falls is to be the site of an idyllic honeymoon, yet she finds herself married and widowed in the space of a day when her husband throws himself into the raging waters of The Falls. In a state of confusion, convinced her disastrous wedding night has played a part in her husband's decision to kill himself, "The Widow Bride of The Falls," as Ariah comes to be known, keeps a relentless, seven-day vigil in the mist waiting for the recovery of his body.

At Ariah's side throughout her ordeal is confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby, a man whose own family understands first hand the treacherousness of The Falls. Dirk finds himself unexpectedly drawn to this plain, strange woman he has been asked to look after, and he falls in love with her though they barely exchange a word. When Ariah leaves Niagara Falls, it is Dirk who pursues her across the state to reveal his passion for her.

Marrying Dirk once again brings Ariah to Niagara Falls to begin a new marriage and a new life. As the years pass, Ariah and Dirk create a seemingly perfect existence for their family. But the tragedy that began their life together shadows them, eventually eroding their happiness with distrust, greed, and even murder.

In the end, it is Dirk and Ariah's three children who are forced to deal with their parents' legacy of dark secrets, unresolved emotions, and cruel truths. Chandler, Royall, and Juliet Burnaby each seek their answers in a different way. What they discover not only helps them come to terms with their loss, but their mother as well.

Against the mythic-historic backdrop of Niagara Falls in the mid-twentieth century, Joyce Carol Oates explores what happens when the richly interwoven relationships of parents and their children are challenged by circumstances from outside the family -- and also from within. Displaying the "impossibly lush and dead-on imaginative powers" (Los Angeles Times) and "mastery of storytelling" (Newsweek) for which Oates has been praised, The Falls illustrates how a place can be as alive as the people who inhabit it.

Discussion Questions

1. Compare Ariah's respective relationships with Gilbert and Dirk, and her reasons for marrying each man.


2. Ariah is deeply impacted by her brief marriage to Gilbert -- their lack of love for one another, their disastrous wedding night, his suicide. How do the physical and psychological circumstances of her first marriage echo throughout her marriage to Dirk?


3. What attracts Dirk to Ariah when he meets her during her seven-day vigil at The Falls? If they had met under different circumstances would Dirk have fallen in love with her?


4. In the days before Gilbert's body is recovered, Ariah "refused to behave as others wished her to behave." In what others ways throughout the story does she defy society's conventions and her family's expectations?


5. Chart the unraveling of Dirk and Ariah's relationship. Is there a specific moment when they begin to grow apart, or is it a gradual process? Is one more at fault than the other?


6. After months of avoiding Nina Olshaker, what motivates Dirk to take her case? Why does he continue the case even when it begins to jeopardize his marriage, his professional standing, his livelihood, and his friendships?


7. What is your opinion of Ariah as a mother, both before and after Dirk's death? Describe her relationship with each child and how it relates to the family as a whole. In what ways is each of Ariah's children similar to -- and different from -- her?


8. Why do you suppose Ariah chose to remain in Niagara Falls after Dirk's death, a place that had claimed the lives of her two husbands?


9. Chandler, Royall, and Juliet each feel compelled to find out the circumstances surrounding their father's death. What drives each one to go on such a quest, and what is gained by it?


10. Discuss the many references to suicide -- including Gilbert's death, Juliet's attempt, and the story of the dairy maid -- and their significance in the story.


11. Why does the family decide to hold a memorial service for Dirk nearly two decades after this death? Why does Ariah at first refuse to attend and then change her mind?


12. What is Joyce Carol Oates saying about the nature of families in The Falls? Are the Burnabys a typical family?

About the author

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

Read a Sample Chapter

The Bride

"No. Please, God. Not this."

The hurt. The humiliation. The unspeakable shame. Not grief, not yet. The shock was too immediate for grief. When she discovered the enigmatic note her husband had left for her propped against a mirror in the bedroom of their honeymoon suite at the Rainbow Grand Hotel, Niagara Falls, New York, Ariah had been married twenty-one hours. When, in the early afternoon of that day, she learned from Niagara Falls police that a man resembling her husband, Gilbert Erskine, had thrown himself into the Horseshoe Falls early that morning and had been swept away -- "vanished, so far without a trace" -- beyond the Devil's Hole Rapids, as the scenic attraction downriver from The Falls was named, she'd been married not quite twenty-eight hours.

These were the stark, cruel facts.

"I'm a bride who has become a widow in less than a day."

Ariah spoke aloud, in a voice of wonder. She was the daughter of a much-revered Presbyterian minister, surely that should have counted for something with God, as it did with secular authorities?

Ariah struck suddenly at her face with both fists. She wanted to pummel, blacken her eyes that had seen too much.

"God, help me! You wouldn't be so cruel -- would you?"

Yes. I would. Foolish woman of course I would. Who are you, to be spared My justice?

How swift the reply came! A taunt that echoed so distinctly in Ariah's skull, she halfway believed these pitying strangers could hear it.

But here was solace: until Gilbert Erskine's body was found in the river and identified, his death was theoretical and not official. Ariah wasn't yet a widow, but still a bride.

... Waking that morning to the rude and incontrovertible fact that she who'd slept alone all her life was yet alone again on the morning following her wedding day. Waking alone though she was no longer Miss Ariah Juliet Littrell but Mrs. Gilbert Erskine. Though no longer the spinster daughter of Reverend and Mrs. Thaddeus Littrell of Troy, New York, piano and voice instructor at the Troy Academy of Music, but the bride of Reverend Gilbert Erskine, recently named minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Palymra, New York.

Waking alone and in that instant she knew. Yet she could not believe, her pride was too great. Not allowing herself to think I am alone. Am I?

A clamor of wedding bells had followed her here. Hundreds of miles. Her head was ringed in pain as if in a vise. Her bowels were sick as if the very intestines were corroded and rotting. In this unfamiliar bed smelling of damp linen, damp flesh and desperation. Where, where was she, what was the name of the hotel he'd brought her to, a paradise for honeymooners, and Niagara Falls was the Honeymoon Capital of the World, a pulse in her head beat so violently she couldn't think. Having been married so briefly she knew little of husbands yet it seemed to her plausible (Ariah was telling herself this as a frightened child might tell herself a story to ward off harm) that Gilbert had only just slipped quietly from the bed and was in the bathroom. She lay very still listening for sounds of faucets, a bath running, a toilet flushing, hoping to hear even as her sensitive nerves resisted hearing. The awkwardness, embarrassment, shame of such intimacy was new to her, like the intimacy of marriage. The "marital bed." Nowhere to hide. His pungent Vitalis hair-oil, and her coyly sweet Lily of the Valley cologne in collision. Just Ariah and Gilbert whom no one called Gil alone together breathless and smiling hard and determined to be cheerful, pleasant, polite with each other as they'd always been before the wedding had joined them in holy matrimony except Ariah had to know something was wrong, she'd been jolted from her hot stuporous sleep to this knowledge.

Gone. He's gone. Can't be gone. Where?

God damn! She was a new, shy bride. So the world perceived her and the world was not mistaken. At the hotel registration desk she'd signed, for the first time, Mrs. Ariah Erskine, and her cheeks had flamed. A virgin, twenty-nine years old. Inexperienced with men as with another species of being. As she lay wracked with pain she didn't dare even to reach out in the enormous bed for fear of touching him.

She wouldn't have wanted him to misinterpret her touch.

Almost, she had to recall his name. "Gilbert." No one called him "Gil." None of the Erskine relatives she'd met. Possibly friends of his at the seminary in Albany had called him "Gil" but that was a side of him Ariah hadn't yet seen, and couldn't presume to know. It was like discussing religious faith with him: he'd been ordained a Presbyterian minister at a very young age and so faith was his professional domain and not hers. To call such a man by the folksy diminutive "Gil" would be too familiar a gesture for Ariah, his fiancée who'd only just become his wife.

In his stiff shy way he'd called her "Ariah, dear." She called him "Gilbert" but had been planning how in a tender moment, as in a romantic Hollywood film, she would begin to call him "darling" -- maybe even "Gil, darling."

Unless all that was changed. That possibility.

She'd had a glass of champagne at the wedding reception, and another glass -- or two -- of champagne in the hotel room the night before, nothing more and yet she'd never felt so drugged, so ravaged. Her eyelashes were stuck together as if with glue, her mouth tasted of acid. She couldn't bear the thought: she'd been sleeping like this, comatose, mouth open and gaping like a fish's.

Had she been snoring? Had Gilbert heard?

She tried to hear him in the bathroom. Antiquated plumbing shrieked and rumbled, but not close by ...