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. Depending on my mood, she either totally absorbed me or she put me to sleep. Ariah is the most solipsistic of characters, dreadful and admirable and fascinating and frustrating. 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. At first it is a story of an eccentric woman and a good man, and the love that brings them together. 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. The Falls is a thick novel and a hypnotic one as well. 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. you can lead tours through it, thrilling and scaring the tourists with your easy ability to demonstrate mastery over nature’s terrors. your car can plunge into it, a murderous trap, the falls your last surprise, your final destination. 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. 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 lose yourself in it, angst and sadness begone, your body falling into something greater than the cares that weigh you down. The terrible, wonderful appeal of a raging waterfall: you can cross above it, brave acrobat.

The falls oates