The Falls, by Joyce Carol Oates
For many years, I’ve counted Joyce Carol Oates among my favourite authors. In The Falls, a story set in Niagara Falls of the 1950s and 1960s, she reinforces all the reasons why I keep coming back to her work. In a pararaph, Oates can set the scene, create its context, and build enough of a character profile to draw you in. Her writing is rich, but doesn’t drawn you down. It’s smooth without being slick. She tells a story in a personal way that can yet have enough dispassionate narrative that you as reader become enraged on behalf of the characters. You want to write letters to the editor, but wait - you remember it’s fiction. Based on facts, yes, and that’s what flames the passion that is stoked by Oates. The story of The Falls is a story of a woman in love, a woman loved, a woman abandoned by betrayal and death, but also the story of a player played, a town corrupted, a population poisoned, and a price extracted at every opportunity for a toll.