There’s a lot of sex in The Widows by Suzette Mayr, a comic novel about three old women: straight sex, lesbian sex, remembered sex, substitute sex – and symbolic sex in the form of a head-long, tumultuous trip over Niagara Falls in an egg-shaped vessel appropriately called the Niagara Ball.

The Widows aren’t widows, any more than this is a geriatrics text. Of the three women in the Niagara Ball only Hannelore Schmitt has a dead husband, killed in 1940 back in Germany. But Frau Schnadelhuber’s Karl left her
for a younger woman and Fraulein Clotilde (Hannelore’s sister) never married, nor was ever interested in men. Cleopatra Maria, their accomplice and Hannelore’s 26 year-old granddaughter, has an on-again, off-again boyfriend, with whom she’s never had conventional sex (he ejaculates prematurely).

The trip over the falls is their supreme adventure – and a sort of rebirth. The Widows (all of whom love to eat) are reduced (literally) to baby food for a while afterward. Not to worry, however, there is a happy and delicious ending. Even Cleopatra Maria learns (also literally) how to handle her boyfriend, and prepares to be properly impregnated.

To tell the story, author Mayr cuts back and forth between the morning of October 24, 1996, when the widows’ great adventure takes place, and the events that led up to it. These include Hannelore’s and Clotilde’s move to Kanada to be near Hannelore’s son and his family; Hannelore’s affair with Hamish, the sexy sexagenarian lighting technician who built the Niagara Ball; and the sizzling romance between Clotilde and Frau Schnadelhuber.

Interspersed are quotes from Pierre Berton and others on previous attempts to shoot Niagara Falls. Chief among them is the story of Anna Edson Taylor, who in 1901 became the first person to survive the trip. Through a touch of magic realism, she actually becomes part of the widows’ story, trying to dissuade them by throwing mud in their washing, and getting Cleopatra Maria drunk.

In her publicity photo Mayr looks closer to Cleopatra Maria’s age than that of the widows, but nevertheless she is able to convey convincingly what they feel. She also sidesteps the problems of dealing sympathetically with Germans who were young in the 1940s. The Widows are prejudiced but mainly (and comically) against Germans from other regions, while both Hannelore and Frau Schnadelhuber have much-loved multi-racial offspring.