If you like Edith Wharton you will love this book. A small book, ironically about the smallness in ourselves. The story takes place in the 1920’s in New York when a group of friends see a young lady leaving a hotel with a man engaged to another of their friends. They assume the worst and the story takes off from there.

Ok, maybe because I lived in WNY too and remember a lot about Love Canal, I am a little biased. But I have read better works from Joyce Carol Oates, so this one surprised me when it disappointed me. Her use of the Falls as a character was too obvious, and the family drama was not as compelling as it could have been. I just did not connect with these characters at all.