Fiction: "By 1900 Niagara Falls had come to be known, to the dismay of local citizens and promoters of the prosperous tourist trade, as 'Suicide's Paradise' " - A Brief History of Niagara Falls (1969)
In June, 1950, Ariah Littrell, piano teacher and minister's daughter, comes to Niagara Falls on her honeymoon with her new husband, stereotypical knock-kneed intellectual Gilbert. Champagne imbibed at the subdued wedding releases a hitherto unsuspected aspect of Ariah's character: sex. Gilbert suddenly discovers what marriage means and simultaneously realises he is gay. So horrified is he that he escapes from the bridal suite before Ariah wakes up, sneaks off to the worst part of the falls, Horsehoe Falls for those who are interested, and flings himself over the edge to a very nasty but apparently popular type of death in those regions.
That's chapter one. Before the novel is over, we experience another suicide, a couple of murders, child death by chemical pollution, disinheritance, marital separation and nervous breakdown. Also, an apparition of the Blessed Virgin, supernatural voices, and intermittent appearances of sirens of, oh dear, a Celtic hue, who lure people to their deaths. Primarily a novel of family life - well, doesn't it sound familiar? - this is certainly not a book in which nothing happens.
The novel, which is richly layered and written with the consummate skill one expects of one of America's best novelists and short story writers, traces the fortunes of Ariah, so tragically abandoned on her wedding night. Within days of her husband's death, she falls in love with his opposite type, Dirk Burnaby, big handsome womaniser, a wealthy lawyer with old money, a much better catch all round, or so it would seem. Their marriage is passionate and produces three children. Dirk, however, in a twist which transforms this analysis of a dysfunctional family to an examination of political and environmental issues, becomes embroiled in a campaign waged by a residents' group against chemical industries accused of illegal dumping of toxic substances in a disused canal, Love Canal. Dirk Burnaby finds himself discovering that Niagara Falls has an even darker side than its hypnotic attraction for suicides. Its wealth, including his own, is based on a lethal chemical industry which cheerfully plays havoc with the lives of the poor. This is all news to him.
The novel thus becomes a metaphor for American inequality and corruption. One privileged social group lives its luxurious life at the expense of an exploited underclass. Nature is presented in all its beauty to a rapt audience of tourists while behind the scenes it is brutally ravaged. The happy marriage of Ariah and Dirk is built on the tragedy of Gilbert, a victim of a rigid puritanical tradition which could not permit him, a homosexual, to live honestly. The sickness of the society described is represented by the split Niagara, the sad industrial city skulking in the wings of the sparkling honeymoon paradise. But the symbol par supreme for what Oates is describing is the waterfall itself, a natural phenomenon of great power and beauty which, while it can enchant and inspire, can also excite a death wish. "The air roars, shakes. The ground beneath your feet shakes. As if the very earth is beginning to come apart, disintegrate into particles, down to its molten centre. As if time has ceased. Time has exploded. You've come too near to the radiant, thrumming, mad heart of all being."
The use of the symbol of the falls suggests that the subject matter of this novel is so complex as to defy simple explanation. Still, a fairly simple explanation at the allegorical level is what we get. Redemption of a kind comes for Ariah and real redemption comes for her three children; even the terrible secret of Love Canal, the toxic dump, is finally revealed and accepted by the community of Niagara Falls, decades after poor Dirk Burnaby is martyred in his own campaign for justice.
This seems slightly too easy. Time heals. The bad 1950s give way to the enlightened 1970s. History is progressive. Is this a convincing metaphor for America, especially America in relation to the environment?
No allegory could work exactly, as Joyce Carol Oates, deepening her story with repeated allusions to intoxication and hypnosis, realises. And Niagara Falls is a convincing symbol of powerful phenomena, such as the US, or the Western world. The author is to be commended for daring to deal with the most serious issue of our time, the problem of man's mesmerised destruction of the natural earth, in this probing and courageous book.
The Falls By Joyce Carol Oates Fourth Estate, 481pp. £17.99
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is a novelist and short story writer