Cathy Marie Buchanan’s The Day the Falls Stood Still

I’m always cautious of historical novels that have any form of the word “romance” anywhere in their descriptions, because things can turn real slutty real fast. I picked it up this summer because, like I mentioned about John Banville’s The Sea, I’m in what seems like a never-ending quest to read the books that are sitting unread on my bookshelf. Who could resist a World War I era story set at Niagara Falls? If nothing else, the book seemed like it would be a light, summer read.

Instead of a light summer read, though, I found a story with an overwhelming theme of loss. Our heroine, Bess, is seventeen when her father loses his well-paying job at a power company that generates power from the flow of the river racing over the falls. This sets in motion a series of unfortunate events and, as such, Bess needs to makes the standard choices regarding love and independence and deals with—you guessed it—loss. I’ve already covered the loss of employment and the loss of money, but there is loss of family members and dealing with death, loss of innocence as a generation of young men goes off to war, loss of friendship, loss of faith, and, the most unique element of the story, loss of the natural river flow as industrial companies siphon off water for their operations. This is where the romance comes in: as it happens, Bess marries the strong, hunky Riverman, who is the stuff of legends and whose grandfather was the original stuff of legends, because of their ability to read the river, sense shifts in the wind that causes ice bridges to melt, and knows just how to fish the dead bodies (loss again!) drowned in the falls and swirling around the whirlpools and eddies. See what I mean about being a little heavy for a summer read? In any case, Bess had just enough moxy to keep me picking up the book, and the story certainly got me thinking of my own family visits to Niagara Falls, and I can certainly say I’m glad the Falls still inspire a sense of wonder in us.

Buchanan, Cathy Marie. The Day the Falls Stood Still. New York: Voice / Hyperion, 2009.

Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man: A Novel

So, a major impetus behind the creation of this blog was to have a means to make public what I consider to be valid and thoughtful opinions on books. I see my book posts occurring in two ways: 1) converting written records of books previously read to this online format and 2) conveying my thoughts of books I have recently finished.

This first book post is dedicated to the novel I last finished: Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man. Ms. Smith is a highly talented author. I delighted in her prose and found her descriptions both unique and imaginative. I also appreciated the topic of her novel. The quirky protagonist, Alex-Li Tandem, deals in the autograph trade and is a well-developed character. Some of his bumbling cluelessness reminded me of Ignatius J. Reilly from Confederacy of Dunces, though I cannot put my finger on why, and the books are nothing alike. While I loathed some of Alex-Li's more unsavory decisions, I came to appreciate his good intentions and became invested in his struggle to deal with his reality--a reality he clearly tries to escape through his preoccupation with Hollywood and the movies he watches over and over again that star his favorite actress.

Ms. Smith is most noted for her first novel White Teeth, for which she won several awards and accolades. You may wonder why I did not read that work, and the explanation is quite simple. I stumbled across The Autograph Man at Changing Hands, the wonderful bookstore I frequent. It was a hardcover book for $7.50 and I couldn't resist! Such a fantastic author cannot just have her book abandoned on the sale shelf! The book needed to have a home! (I have a book buying problem so serious I refer to it as book rescuing . . . but more on that later.)

RECOMMENDED: Yes

NEXT READ: Gail Carriger's Soulless

REREAD: Roald Dahl's Matilda


Smith, Zadie. The Autograph Man: A Novel. New York: 
     Random House, 2002.