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Fall on Your Knees
They are the Pipers of Cape Breton Island — a family steeped in lies and unspoken truths that reach out from the past, forever mindful of the tragic secret that could shatter the family to its foundations. Chronicling five generations of this eccentric clan, Fall on Your Knees follows four remarkable sisters whose lives are filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love. Their experiences will take them from their stormswept homeland, across the battlefields of World War I, to the freedom and independence of Jazz-era New York City.
Compellingly written, running the literary gamut from menacingly dark to hilariously funny, this is an epic saga of one family’s trials and triumphs in a world of sin, guilt, and redemption.
Compellingly written, running the literary gamut from menacingly dark to hilariously funny, this is an epic saga of one family’s trials and triumphs in a world of sin, guilt, and redemption.
672 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
About the author
Ann-Marie MacDonald
18 books1,252 followersAnn-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian playwright, novelist, actor and broadcast journalist who lives in Toronto, Ontario. The daughter of a member of Canada's military, she was born at an air force base near Baden-Baden, West Germany.
MacDonald won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for her first novel, Fall on Your Knees, which was also named to Oprah Winfrey's Book Club.
She received the Governor General's Award for Literary Merit, the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award and the Canadian Author's Association Award for her play, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet).
She also appeared in the films I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and Better Than Chocolate, among others.
Her 2003 novel, The Way the Crow Flies, was partly inspired by the Steven Truscott case.
She also hosted the CBC Documentary series Life and Times from 1996 to 2007.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnnMarieMacD...
MacDonald won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for her first novel, Fall on Your Knees, which was also named to Oprah Winfrey's Book Club.
She received the Governor General's Award for Literary Merit, the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award and the Canadian Author's Association Award for her play, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet).
She also appeared in the films I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and Better Than Chocolate, among others.
Her 2003 novel, The Way the Crow Flies, was partly inspired by the Steven Truscott case.
She also hosted the CBC Documentary series Life and Times from 1996 to 2007.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnnMarieMacD...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,592 reviews
July 14, 2009
OMG, I hated this book. It was painful to read. I spent a good 3 hours trying to read this book and ended up skimming the rest of it so I could be done with it.
MacDonald covers just about every topic in her book: racial tension, isolation, domestic abuse, and forbidden love, which leads to incest, death, and even murder, but does it in a very complicated way that will turn many readers away.
I consider myself a strong reader-one who has fantastic reading comprehension but this book tests even the strongest of readers. I felt that I had to read for days in order to get the jest of what she wrote about 30-50 pages back. It was ridiculous.
I consider myself pretty open to reading just about anything but this one just was too much....
I think I'll stick to my VC Andrews for my abuse and incest stories. She does them so much better than MacDonald did...and that's not saying much is it?
I'll give it 1 star but to be honest I wish Zero stars was an option...maybe even negative ones. I will not be reading anymore of her books.
updated shelves June 2011: zero stars due to skimming and not fully reading
MacDonald covers just about every topic in her book: racial tension, isolation, domestic abuse, and forbidden love, which leads to incest, death, and even murder, but does it in a very complicated way that will turn many readers away.
I consider myself a strong reader-one who has fantastic reading comprehension but this book tests even the strongest of readers. I felt that I had to read for days in order to get the jest of what she wrote about 30-50 pages back. It was ridiculous.
I consider myself pretty open to reading just about anything but this one just was too much....
I think I'll stick to my VC Andrews for my abuse and incest stories. She does them so much better than MacDonald did...and that's not saying much is it?
I'll give it 1 star but to be honest I wish Zero stars was an option...maybe even negative ones. I will not be reading anymore of her books.
updated shelves June 2011: zero stars due to skimming and not fully reading
September 5, 2018
2.5 stars !
Jaidee fell on his knees and screamed
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!"
How can a book that is written well with many excellent elements cause such dire frustration and become a hodgepodge mess????
Ms. Macdonald is a very good writer with wonderful ideas that seem limitless but unfortunately she tried to fit them all in the span of one novel. There are a thousand stories in here and none get developed. She creates a number of interesting characters only to plaster them with more and more make-up and gaudier and gaudier costumes that take them from being flesh and blood to Vaudeville players.
This book is like taking first rate ingredients and putting them all together in a stew without any thought to how they will taste together.
She piles dysfunction on top of dysfunction on top of dysfunction so that something that is initially interesting becomes histrionic and then just plain tedious.
I will try another novel of hers at some point and see if she has been able to direct her talent into something more cohesive, whole and ultimately satisfying.
Jaidee fell on his knees and screamed
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!"
How can a book that is written well with many excellent elements cause such dire frustration and become a hodgepodge mess????
Ms. Macdonald is a very good writer with wonderful ideas that seem limitless but unfortunately she tried to fit them all in the span of one novel. There are a thousand stories in here and none get developed. She creates a number of interesting characters only to plaster them with more and more make-up and gaudier and gaudier costumes that take them from being flesh and blood to Vaudeville players.
This book is like taking first rate ingredients and putting them all together in a stew without any thought to how they will taste together.
She piles dysfunction on top of dysfunction on top of dysfunction so that something that is initially interesting becomes histrionic and then just plain tedious.
I will try another novel of hers at some point and see if she has been able to direct her talent into something more cohesive, whole and ultimately satisfying.
December 29, 2012
I was in a super geeky frame of mind when I read this book in early spring of 2012. I had been reading books about metaphors (see I told you... geeky). And as fate would have it I picked up this book suggested probably via the stream of books suggested on Amazon after you look at a book title there—right after my nerdy metaphor phase.
I literally started writing down metaphors I came across in the prose of this book... AMAZING. Beautiful. I'm not talking about similes or simple comparisons people. I'm talking about brilliant metaphors,that blow my mind!!
"... the glass panes gloated..."
"... the silvery sea flatters the moon."
"...cleanliness of steel born of soot."
"Shivering slightly at the unaccustomed breeze passing through the new spaces in her spine."
"She fell through a crack in time without spilling a drop. When she returned the tea was still piping hot."
"Teresa smiles at her. Frances collects the moment and puts in in a safe place, with 2 or 3 others." (other moments isn't that brilliant!?)
"The air (New York) is what the Gods live on."
"Sits down (in train station) serenaded by the (noisy) crowd."
(Scared) "It's autumn in her mouth and all her tongue can do is rustle."
(Upon waking) "Light in eyes: she buries her face in her pillow because the light is an eye operation... in the scalpel light."
"Kathleen is an abandoned mine." (after c-section/death)
knocking) "The door is thumping like a heart attack."
(happy)"He was Aladdin in an orchard dripping with diamonds."
"It was all boarded up, but he set to work, prying planks off windows, healing the blind."
"Her hair smells like the raw edge of spring."
(he was a) Cucumber in a woollen suit." (vs cool as a cucumber).
"A bookish girl, plain as a rainy Tuesday."
And possibly my very mostest favorite-est one of all:
"...enough merchandise to Mephistophelize a miner's wife."
I didn't know that word could be a verb!! :)
Oh the story? The Plot? Also fabulous. WORTH READING. Worth reading twice. Follows a young man in Nova Scotia and his life in a mining town. His young wife, their children and later the story of the children's lives... Epic. Amazing. Disgusting. Compelling. Sweet. Horrible. EVERYTHING a wonderful novel should be (and is).
Okay just go read it already.
I literally started writing down metaphors I came across in the prose of this book... AMAZING. Beautiful. I'm not talking about similes or simple comparisons people. I'm talking about brilliant metaphors,that blow my mind!!
"... the glass panes gloated..."
"... the silvery sea flatters the moon."
"...cleanliness of steel born of soot."
"Shivering slightly at the unaccustomed breeze passing through the new spaces in her spine."
"She fell through a crack in time without spilling a drop. When she returned the tea was still piping hot."
"Teresa smiles at her. Frances collects the moment and puts in in a safe place, with 2 or 3 others." (other moments isn't that brilliant!?)
"The air (New York) is what the Gods live on."
"Sits down (in train station) serenaded by the (noisy) crowd."
(Scared) "It's autumn in her mouth and all her tongue can do is rustle."
(Upon waking) "Light in eyes: she buries her face in her pillow because the light is an eye operation... in the scalpel light."
"Kathleen is an abandoned mine." (after c-section/death)
knocking) "The door is thumping like a heart attack."
(happy)"He was Aladdin in an orchard dripping with diamonds."
"It was all boarded up, but he set to work, prying planks off windows, healing the blind."
"Her hair smells like the raw edge of spring."
(he was a) Cucumber in a woollen suit." (vs cool as a cucumber).
"A bookish girl, plain as a rainy Tuesday."
And possibly my very mostest favorite-est one of all:
"...enough merchandise to Mephistophelize a miner's wife."
I didn't know that word could be a verb!! :)
Oh the story? The Plot? Also fabulous. WORTH READING. Worth reading twice. Follows a young man in Nova Scotia and his life in a mining town. His young wife, their children and later the story of the children's lives... Epic. Amazing. Disgusting. Compelling. Sweet. Horrible. EVERYTHING a wonderful novel should be (and is).
Okay just go read it already.
May 22, 2017
Episch familiedrama gesitueerd in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, rond 1900...pijnlijk, rauw...daardoor ook mooi...
De jonge pianostemmer James wordt verliefd op de dertienjarige Materia...Haar ouders staan niet achter haar keuze en ze worden verbannen. Ze leven bewust geisoleerd...door het leeftijdsverschil en het verschil in karakter, voelt James weerzin voor Materia. Hij richt al zijn hoop en liefde op hun eerstgeboren dochter Kathleen. Zij heeft 'de stem', hij onderwijst haar en haar volledige onderricht is gericht op haar ontwikkeling en haar carrière. Dit vormt ook haar karakter. Alle gebeurtenissen die volgen vloeien hier uit voort...de gebeurtenissen (ik verklap niets...) zijn heftig, rauw...mooi...
Een briljant debuut...een aanrader!!
De jonge pianostemmer James wordt verliefd op de dertienjarige Materia...Haar ouders staan niet achter haar keuze en ze worden verbannen. Ze leven bewust geisoleerd...door het leeftijdsverschil en het verschil in karakter, voelt James weerzin voor Materia. Hij richt al zijn hoop en liefde op hun eerstgeboren dochter Kathleen. Zij heeft 'de stem', hij onderwijst haar en haar volledige onderricht is gericht op haar ontwikkeling en haar carrière. Dit vormt ook haar karakter. Alle gebeurtenissen die volgen vloeien hier uit voort...de gebeurtenissen (ik verklap niets...) zijn heftig, rauw...mooi...
Een briljant debuut...een aanrader!!
November 22, 2011
For 15 years (1996-2010), Oprah Winfrey picked books for her book club. Out of the 69 titles that she chose only 13 (19%) have appeared in at least any of the three (2006, 2008, 2010) editions of Boxall’s 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die:
Wait, Ann-Marie, who?
You see, for me, her name does not really ring a bell. Similar to the names of others in the list like Pearl Cleage, Sheri Reynolds, Mary McGarry Morris, Edwidge Danticat, Billie Leats, Bret Lott, Melinda Haynes, Breena Clarke, Gwyn Hayman Rubio and Malika Oufkir. I think, they all became household names because their books were picked by Oprah. What was being included in the Most Influential People lists for so many years if she could not rally people to read her chosen books.
I must admit that I read David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth because of Oprah’s stamp. However, I have had no motivation to read right away her other choices including Fall on Your Knees because of what Jonathan Franzen said in the interview that Oprah’s picks catered more for readers who were women than men.
On the superficial level, that still is my main comment for this book, Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald. The story of 3 sisters: Kathleen the eldest. She is beautiful, a musical genius and an apple of the eye of his father; Mercedes, may not be as pretty as her siblings but she stood as the mother for her sisters when their mother died; Frances is as beautiful as Kathleen and she suffered in the hands of their father when the latter came back from the war. Joining them is Lily who is the daughter of Kathleen and a twin of the baby infant Ambrose who accidentally died in the hands of Frances when he and Lily were born. The 3 sisters’ mother, Materia completes the list of female characters. She is the only daughter of a wealthy Lebanese businessman. She defied her parents who wished that she would marry a dentist by eloping with her husband, James. So, the only male main character is the father James who may be good-intentioned and has big dreams for her children but he is weak to resist temptation and to overcome the psychological effects of war.
So, there you go: 5 strong female characters versus 1 weak male character. So the mostly female adorers of Oprah cheer and clap their hands when Oprah raises the book and says “Hail, hail, read this book as I could not keep my hands from flipping over the pages while reading this!”
However, for me, there are three saving graces for this book. And this maybe the reason why Oprah just flipped and flipped the pages till the wee hours of the morning:
Now, I no longer wonder why the Boxall’s 1001 editors chose this book over the more popular Oprah titles like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, The Pillars of the Earth, The Road, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, East of Eden, I Know This Much is True, She’s Come Undone or The Deep End of the Ocean.
4 by TONI MORRISON (Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon)
2 by CHARLES DICKENS (A Tale of the Two Cities and Great Expectations)
2 by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ (One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera)
1 each by LEO TOLSTOY (Anna Karenina), ALAN PATTON (Cry, My Beloved Country), JONATHAN FRANZEN (The Corrections), BARBARA KINGSOLVER (The Poisonwood Bible), BERNARD SCHLINK (The Reader), and ANN-MARIE MACDONALD.
Wait, Ann-Marie, who?
You see, for me, her name does not really ring a bell. Similar to the names of others in the list like Pearl Cleage, Sheri Reynolds, Mary McGarry Morris, Edwidge Danticat, Billie Leats, Bret Lott, Melinda Haynes, Breena Clarke, Gwyn Hayman Rubio and Malika Oufkir. I think, they all became household names because their books were picked by Oprah. What was being included in the Most Influential People lists for so many years if she could not rally people to read her chosen books.
I must admit that I read David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth because of Oprah’s stamp. However, I have had no motivation to read right away her other choices including Fall on Your Knees because of what Jonathan Franzen said in the interview that Oprah’s picks catered more for readers who were women than men.
On the superficial level, that still is my main comment for this book, Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald. The story of 3 sisters: Kathleen the eldest. She is beautiful, a musical genius and an apple of the eye of his father; Mercedes, may not be as pretty as her siblings but she stood as the mother for her sisters when their mother died; Frances is as beautiful as Kathleen and she suffered in the hands of their father when the latter came back from the war. Joining them is Lily who is the daughter of Kathleen and a twin of the baby infant Ambrose who accidentally died in the hands of Frances when he and Lily were born. The 3 sisters’ mother, Materia completes the list of female characters. She is the only daughter of a wealthy Lebanese businessman. She defied her parents who wished that she would marry a dentist by eloping with her husband, James. So, the only male main character is the father James who may be good-intentioned and has big dreams for her children but he is weak to resist temptation and to overcome the psychological effects of war.
So, there you go: 5 strong female characters versus 1 weak male character. So the mostly female adorers of Oprah cheer and clap their hands when Oprah raises the book and says “Hail, hail, read this book as I could not keep my hands from flipping over the pages while reading this!”
However, for me, there are three saving graces for this book. And this maybe the reason why Oprah just flipped and flipped the pages till the wee hours of the morning:
1. Brilliant first chapter that begins with “They are all dead now” then you follow the camera that zooms in to the things that the previous occupants of the house possessed and used.
2. Character-driven plot. Mac-Donald’s characters are bigger than the old familiar themes (family love, sisterly love, incest, war, etc) that we have all seen in the movies and read in similar books. Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres easily came to my mind. For one, MacDonald was never melodramatic and you don’t close the book feeling emotionally cheated.
3. Having said that, the denouement is well-handled. The use of the family tree not only wraps up the whole story but it provides the symbolism of the book’s main theme: family love, that no matter what we do, at the end of our lives, what matters most is our family. Then when you close the book, you know who the narrator of the first chapter should be. Well thought of novel. Well organized. Well written. For a first time writer, this is just amazing.
Now, I no longer wonder why the Boxall’s 1001 editors chose this book over the more popular Oprah titles like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, The Pillars of the Earth, The Road, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, East of Eden, I Know This Much is True, She’s Come Undone or The Deep End of the Ocean.
October 14, 2008
This book reminded me of a grown-up VC Andrews, except you can read it on the subway without feeling like a pervy 12 year-old. Very Gothic at times and the crazy family drama had me reading non-stop, despite all the main characters being unlikeable assholes in one way or another. One thing that bugged me was that some of the writing didn't seem historically accurate. Did people in the 1920s really say "barf?" Maybe they did, I don't know. Regardless, I couldn't put this down and I blew through it in a couple days.
July 15, 2020
I have had this piece by Ann-Marie MacDonald on my to-read shelf for a significant amount of time, but never found the time to read it. When I took the plunge, I kicked myself for waiting so long, as there was a great deal to enjoy within it and seems worthy of the accolades it’s received. New Waterford, Nova Scotia is a small town on Cape Breton Island, along Canada’s East Coast. At the turn of the 20th century, things were bustling and the population quite varied. It was this that brought James Piper and Materia Mahmoud together in a union of forbidden love. James, who is without a strong religious morality, did not sit well with the staunch Catholic Mahmouds, whose Lebanese background left them little choice but to disown Materia. Once married, the Pipers began building the foundation of their family, which included a slew of daughters: Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances, and much later on, Lily. What follows is a tale of drama and intrigue that pushes the Pipers to the brink. In a family so apparently tightly-woven is a pile of secrets, both from the outside world and amongst themselves, that no unit could be expected to come out of it without cracks. With a skill all her own, Kathleen heads to New York City to pursue a dream while James leaves to fight in the Great War for Canada (and Britain). By the end of the skirmish, both of them would experience life-altering events that would change the narrative forever. Struck by a number of tragedies in short order, the Pipers grow and evolve in a multi-generational story that exemplifies how decisions are catalysts for familial metamorphosis. As the years pass, some of these secrets come to the surface, while new and devastating ones emerge, taking these Piper women to new depths as they try to define themselves against the backdrop of an ever-changing small-town Canada feel. Brilliant in its delivery, MacDonald holds the reader’s attention throughout. Recommended to those who love familial sagas that build on themselves, as well as the reader who prefers small-town stories and their unique narrative pathways.
I remember reading another of MacDonald’s novels years ago and being fully committed from the get-go. The story, the style, and the characters all came together nicely and left me wanting more. However, I never found the push to reach for this book and actually read it until now. This story sees many of the Pipers take the protagonist’s seat and so I won’t choose just one. That being said, I can admit that all of these characters come together effectively to complement one another and help thicken the plot while aiding in creating wonderful backstory and development for one another. From the struggles of raising a family in the early 20th century to familial abandonment, the shock of war to the loss of a loved one, the confusion of one’s place in the family unit to finding a place in the world. All these are struggles faced throughout this powerful book whose narrative never lets the reader take a breath. MacDonald contrasts all these against a time when speaking out was less fashionable and the mighty hand came down on those who stepped out of line. Using Nova Scotia as a setting was brilliant, as it adds even more to the story, both for its wonderful scenery and less electrified feel. McDonald is able to inject some big city moments in New York, but there is something about the sheltered life on Cape Breton that spoke to me. With detailed chapters that serve more as family vignettes, MacDonald paints a wonderful picture of events as they progress throughout history. While this is a long book, it is sure to grip the reader in such a way that the pages will flow easily and the plot will keep the story moving. Patience is a virtue and MacDonald rewards that type of reader throughout this piece.
Kudos, Madam MacDonald, for this stunning piece that opened my eyes to so very much about the time, the region, and your writing!
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
I remember reading another of MacDonald’s novels years ago and being fully committed from the get-go. The story, the style, and the characters all came together nicely and left me wanting more. However, I never found the push to reach for this book and actually read it until now. This story sees many of the Pipers take the protagonist’s seat and so I won’t choose just one. That being said, I can admit that all of these characters come together effectively to complement one another and help thicken the plot while aiding in creating wonderful backstory and development for one another. From the struggles of raising a family in the early 20th century to familial abandonment, the shock of war to the loss of a loved one, the confusion of one’s place in the family unit to finding a place in the world. All these are struggles faced throughout this powerful book whose narrative never lets the reader take a breath. MacDonald contrasts all these against a time when speaking out was less fashionable and the mighty hand came down on those who stepped out of line. Using Nova Scotia as a setting was brilliant, as it adds even more to the story, both for its wonderful scenery and less electrified feel. McDonald is able to inject some big city moments in New York, but there is something about the sheltered life on Cape Breton that spoke to me. With detailed chapters that serve more as family vignettes, MacDonald paints a wonderful picture of events as they progress throughout history. While this is a long book, it is sure to grip the reader in such a way that the pages will flow easily and the plot will keep the story moving. Patience is a virtue and MacDonald rewards that type of reader throughout this piece.
Kudos, Madam MacDonald, for this stunning piece that opened my eyes to so very much about the time, the region, and your writing!
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
February 13, 2018
An amazingly harsh view of the hardships of life.
This book is most definitely one of my favorites. It is absolutely amazing. It's scandalous, it's real, it's intriguing, it's just plain -good-! MacDonald's writing style creates an interactive world that pulls you in to first person view of the characters' lives.
The story follows the Piper family, a unique little set up of father and four daughters. Mr. Piper's wife has passed, leaving him to fend for himself in a home bursting to the seams with the drama of being a young girl growing up with three other sisters. Kathleen, the eldest of the girls, has been sent away to live out her father's vision of fame and perfection with her glorious voice. Left behind are Frances (a fiesty middle child who lives by her own rules), Lily (the youngest of the four, living with a crippled leg and a strong desire to please and do good), and Mercedes (the second eldest, longing to take the place of their late mother and following her faith closely and fiercely). Each girl has their own story which is brimming with secrets that are both outrageous and real. Mystery is around every corner, and controversy hides behind each one.
If I had to describe it in one word, it would be "intense". Every story is intertwined in surprising and unexpected ways. It's difficult to not fall in love with someone in the novel because there really is somebody for everyone to relate to.
If you can stomach some harsh, dramatic reality with believable characters in a world covered with a dark veil of the unexpected, then this book may be the right way to go.
This book is most definitely one of my favorites. It is absolutely amazing. It's scandalous, it's real, it's intriguing, it's just plain -good-! MacDonald's writing style creates an interactive world that pulls you in to first person view of the characters' lives.
The story follows the Piper family, a unique little set up of father and four daughters. Mr. Piper's wife has passed, leaving him to fend for himself in a home bursting to the seams with the drama of being a young girl growing up with three other sisters. Kathleen, the eldest of the girls, has been sent away to live out her father's vision of fame and perfection with her glorious voice. Left behind are Frances (a fiesty middle child who lives by her own rules), Lily (the youngest of the four, living with a crippled leg and a strong desire to please and do good), and Mercedes (the second eldest, longing to take the place of their late mother and following her faith closely and fiercely). Each girl has their own story which is brimming with secrets that are both outrageous and real. Mystery is around every corner, and controversy hides behind each one.
If I had to describe it in one word, it would be "intense". Every story is intertwined in surprising and unexpected ways. It's difficult to not fall in love with someone in the novel because there really is somebody for everyone to relate to.
If you can stomach some harsh, dramatic reality with believable characters in a world covered with a dark veil of the unexpected, then this book may be the right way to go.
March 5, 2010
Okay - this is the second "Oprah's Book Club" book that I've read and, like DROWNING RUTH(Christina Schwartz), I disliked the story due to the disturbingly depressing plot. In DROWNING RUTH, the whole idea of a mentally-ill and controlling aunt (Amanda) ruining the life of her little niece (Ruth) after the girl's mother (Mathilda) mysteriously fell through the ice and drowned one cold winter eve was merely depressing; in FALL ON YOUR KNEES, however,the pervading theme of incest was more than distressing, it was just downright gross (and this is from an open-minded reader NOT easily shocked or bothered by sexual content!) Although I am always interested in reading books that deal with sensitive and even shocking topics (sometimes this makes a book more interesting!), I just don't find a need to experience incest in such poetic prose!
There's one thing I don't get - in the description on the back cover, the story is called "menacingly dark and hilariously funny" and it is also called "darkly humorous". Maybe I'm missing something or perhaps I'm not sophisticated enough, but I just don't see any humor at all in this distressing tale - and, like I said, I'm a very open-minded reader!
There's one thing I don't get - in the description on the back cover, the story is called "menacingly dark and hilariously funny" and it is also called "darkly humorous". Maybe I'm missing something or perhaps I'm not sophisticated enough, but I just don't see any humor at all in this distressing tale - and, like I said, I'm a very open-minded reader!
May 10, 2013
Opet poetska kanadska autorka i opet veliko MUST READ... Ovakve knjige pamtite dugo nakon što ste ih pročitali i preporučujete je dalje... Nažalost, ne postoji srpski prevod...
June 21, 2011
This book left me wanting to slash my wrists-- especially when I think about the time I spent reading it that I can never get back.
Many people loved this book. I am not one of them. The characters are shallow,self-involved and just plain crazy and while I realize that this is just like the people you meet in your everyday I life, it doesn't necessarily mean I want to read about them unless they are delivered in a well-written story that makes them shine a little. This is not that kind of story.
Reading this book (and I persisted because I am an open-minded reader) was like trudging through mud. And as open-minded as I am, I just could not take the rather graphic descriptions of molestation and incest. Ms. MacDonald, some times less is more.
About 100 pages before the end I was ready to quit. I'd had all I could take of the simpering, whining, craziness and frequent spinelessness of the Piper family. I only kept reading because I was actually interested in the story of what happened to Kathleen in New York.
Many people loved this book. I am not one of them. The characters are shallow,self-involved and just plain crazy and while I realize that this is just like the people you meet in your everyday I life, it doesn't necessarily mean I want to read about them unless they are delivered in a well-written story that makes them shine a little. This is not that kind of story.
Reading this book (and I persisted because I am an open-minded reader) was like trudging through mud. And as open-minded as I am, I just could not take the rather graphic descriptions of molestation and incest. Ms. MacDonald, some times less is more.
About 100 pages before the end I was ready to quit. I'd had all I could take of the simpering, whining, craziness and frequent spinelessness of the Piper family. I only kept reading because I was actually interested in the story of what happened to Kathleen in New York.
March 18, 2010
Actually, I give this sort of a three b/c the author's style was oddly skillful, as a story though, it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Parts of the books were intriguing, other parts disturbing -- but given the subject matter I see no way around that; and yet, I can't quite get past it either.
Frankly I'm just really conflicted. The writing style was definitely interesting. Choppy, metaphoric, sensational; the author was very effective in putting me inside the characters' heads. I admire her ability, but sometimes I wanted out b/c it was such a dreadful place to be.
The father was a dispicable man, and there is no getting around that. The forgiveness between him and Frances at the end was somewhat redeeming -- sort of. The way Frances sent Lilly out into the world was weird. And the ending was unsatisfying regarding every character, except for Frances's son.
Hmm...I think I'll be puzzling over this one for awhile, and maybe that was the author's goal. If so, then I give her 5 stars. I guess the best way to describe this book is mostly interesting, and extremely unsettling. Read at your own risk.
Frankly I'm just really conflicted. The writing style was definitely interesting. Choppy, metaphoric, sensational; the author was very effective in putting me inside the characters' heads. I admire her ability, but sometimes I wanted out b/c it was such a dreadful place to be.
The father was a dispicable man, and there is no getting around that. The forgiveness between him and Frances at the end was somewhat redeeming -- sort of. The way Frances sent Lilly out into the world was weird. And the ending was unsatisfying regarding every character, except for Frances's son.
Hmm...I think I'll be puzzling over this one for awhile, and maybe that was the author's goal. If so, then I give her 5 stars. I guess the best way to describe this book is mostly interesting, and extremely unsettling. Read at your own risk.
November 15, 2014
Lily stays sitting. “Frances. What if Ambrose is the Devil?” “He’s not the Devil. I know who the Devil is and it isn’t Ambrose.” “Who’s the Devil?” Frances crouches down as if she were talking to Trixie. “That’s something I’ll never tell you, Lily, no matter how old you get to be, because the Devil is shy. It makes him angry when someone recognizes him, so once they do the Devil gets after them. And I don’t want the Devil to get after you.” “Is the Devil after you?”
“Yes.”
This is Ann-Marie MacDonald's debut novel. I need to keep reminding myself about this fact that it's a debut novel because it is a polished work of complexity and beauty.
Fall on Your Knees, set in Cape Breton at in the first half of the 20th century, tells the story of Materia, Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances, and Lily - i.e. all the women of the Piper family. Each woman has a voice, a distinct history, a distinct outlook on life - and a distinct fate. So, really this is a novel with five main characters - not to mention James, who dwells at the centre of all their lives.
This book has so many layers that it was easy to be sucked into the world of the Pipers. But it is not a comfortable place. Far from it, it is a world full of harshness, brutality, and abuse, where each of the characters is trying to escape the confines of what holds them. Be it religion, loyalty, or something else - each character has their own form of imprisonment.
"God did not put me on this earth to stand by while my sister Frances is killed. Beaten is one thing. Wrongly touched is one thing. Stabbed with a bayonet is another. Push. Be strong enough to carry the burden of sin that goes with doing the right thing. There is only one saint in this family and I’m not it. God has made Mercedes a judge. No one loves you for that. Not like a crippled child who’s prone to visions. Whom Mercedes prizes. Not like a fallen woman who makes people laugh. Whom Mercedes loves."
When reading some of the reviews, the aspect that I have picked up on most is that people have read this because it was an Oprah bookclub read. I am usually hesitant to follow up hyped up books, but sometimes, just sometimes, they are a exactly the type of book that will work their way into your soul.
Fall on Your Knees is a perfectly constructed family saga, but it is also more than this. It is a beautifully sketched insight into the human condition.
Mercedes is neither a saint nor a sinner. She is somewhere in between. She is why purgatory was invented.
“Yes.”
This is Ann-Marie MacDonald's debut novel. I need to keep reminding myself about this fact that it's a debut novel because it is a polished work of complexity and beauty.
Fall on Your Knees, set in Cape Breton at in the first half of the 20th century, tells the story of Materia, Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances, and Lily - i.e. all the women of the Piper family. Each woman has a voice, a distinct history, a distinct outlook on life - and a distinct fate. So, really this is a novel with five main characters - not to mention James, who dwells at the centre of all their lives.
This book has so many layers that it was easy to be sucked into the world of the Pipers. But it is not a comfortable place. Far from it, it is a world full of harshness, brutality, and abuse, where each of the characters is trying to escape the confines of what holds them. Be it religion, loyalty, or something else - each character has their own form of imprisonment.
"God did not put me on this earth to stand by while my sister Frances is killed. Beaten is one thing. Wrongly touched is one thing. Stabbed with a bayonet is another. Push. Be strong enough to carry the burden of sin that goes with doing the right thing. There is only one saint in this family and I’m not it. God has made Mercedes a judge. No one loves you for that. Not like a crippled child who’s prone to visions. Whom Mercedes prizes. Not like a fallen woman who makes people laugh. Whom Mercedes loves."
When reading some of the reviews, the aspect that I have picked up on most is that people have read this because it was an Oprah bookclub read. I am usually hesitant to follow up hyped up books, but sometimes, just sometimes, they are a exactly the type of book that will work their way into your soul.
Fall on Your Knees is a perfectly constructed family saga, but it is also more than this. It is a beautifully sketched insight into the human condition.
Mercedes is neither a saint nor a sinner. She is somewhere in between. She is why purgatory was invented.
March 30, 2008
I discovered Ann-Marie MacDonald by accident, when I bought The Way the Crow Flies in a used bookstore during a biblioemergency. She hooked me instantly with her ability to get inside childhood, and her searingly real portraits of life in the 1960s, with the bonus of superb storytelling acumen and writing that is a pleasure to read. I read Fall on Your Knee second and had that wonderful enjoyment of a second shot of a writer who you liked so much the first time you didn't think you could have that pleasure again. Not only was Fall On Your Knees similarly satisfying, but it was uniquely satisfying for AMM's ability to create a nearly perfect gothic novel, along with all her other amazing traits. If I had to compare her to another writer, it would be Annie Proulx for her ability to give great reading plasure from the darkest of stories.
May 11, 2012
I read this book because my partner and I have an agreement. We both love wildly different styles of books, so we each choose one of our favourites and make the other person read it. This was her choice (I made her read A game of thrones in case you're wondering).
I hated this book for it's subject matter and content. The damn thing ended just when it started getting interesting and glossed over anything that was actually worth finding out more about. (roughly the last third was fantastic, but she skipped over so many things that by the end I was more than a little disappointed.)
I didn't give a damn about any of the characters, couldn't identify with the setting and felt like the last third of the book, with it's incredibly different tone, would have better stood as it's own book.
That being said I love the author's turn of phrase. This for me is the literary equivalent of listening to someone with a beautiful voice read the phone book. The content is meaningless but damn it sounds good.
I hated this book for it's subject matter and content. The damn thing ended just when it started getting interesting and glossed over anything that was actually worth finding out more about. (roughly the last third was fantastic, but she skipped over so many things that by the end I was more than a little disappointed.)
I didn't give a damn about any of the characters, couldn't identify with the setting and felt like the last third of the book, with it's incredibly different tone, would have better stood as it's own book.
That being said I love the author's turn of phrase. This for me is the literary equivalent of listening to someone with a beautiful voice read the phone book. The content is meaningless but damn it sounds good.
April 25, 2007
I kept picking it up and putting it down in frustration. I know so many people loved it, but when I saw it come up on Oprah's book list I just wanted to die. So much was happening, but being written about in the most boring way possible. It didn't hold my interest, which is rare since as a Canadian I was brought up on the typical Canadian novel diet. It amazes me how so many Canadian writers can write books where lots of big important things happen, yet do it in a way that just makes them so b.o.r.i.n.g. It also amazes me that this is what passes for a good Canadian novel. The content was interesting, but executed badly.
November 26, 2018
What a fabulous year 2018 is turning out to be, as far as books are concerned. I had the pleasure of reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith, for the first time this year. Same with The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt. Fantastic novels, both of them, of course, and I had waited far too long. And now this. This!
Crazy.
I'm in love again. With a book. Again.
Crazy.
I'm in love again. With a book. Again.
May 2, 2012
there are 17,636 ratings and 1,500 reviews of this book. if you want to see them all you have to scroll through eight hundred sixteen pages. i just noticed because i wanted to see if anyone else found this novel picaresque. no one did in the first three pages. if someone could search the other 813 and report to me, i'd be grateful.
so, i found this novel picaresque, or at least somewhat picaresque. it seems clearly picaresque to me when frances is in the narrative. i don't have a tremendous passion for the picaresque and the rocambolesque. i like my stories neat and real and possibly tidy. this is sprawling and untidy, even though almost all the strands are tied at the end.
it is also an extraordinarily quirky and strange novel, though i've seen reviewers say that it is a straight and ordinary read. this is my explanation: canadian literature is invariably quirky, but if you are canadian you won't notice it. that's how we know which reviewers are canadians.
it took me two weeks to read this. it's a long time. frances' adventures, while fascinating and absolutely crazy, didn't draw me in enough to pull long reading stretches and i think that overall the novel might have gained from being shorter and on fewer tracks.
but i'm quibbling. this story belongs to mercedes, frances, and lily. materia is sacrificed at the altar of the multi-generational format, which is a shame because her madness is so, so interesting. women stay alive by going mad. it happens in books over and over. it happens in life. we stay alive by going mad.
but the story belongs to the three sisters and this is an exceptional sister story. this is what it shows: that sisterhood (the familial kind) is tremendously powerful but also a force so strong that it must be reined in gently and firmly, and never allowed to get out of control. sisterhood can keep you sane and happy and make you feel deeply loved in the midst of terrible mayhem -- and kill you the next moment. i speak as someone who has three sisters. sisters who have survived three or four world wars together may not be able to remain good to each other. when their love turns poisonous, they can choose to stay and be poisoned, or leave. there is an extraordinary act of love toward the end. it concerns frances and lily. watch for it.
i don't know what it is with the violence of fathers. i wish i knew.
this book is listed here on goodreads in many lesbian lists. if you are reading it for the lesbian story you'll have to wait a good long time, because it takes place at the very end. if it had been stuck in the middle, fewer people might have remembered it and thus bothered to classify this book as a lesbian book. there is a queer undertone under all of it, though, and the lesbian story is extremely beautiful. still, i would not consider this a lesbian book.
i think i may be done with anne-marie macdonald. i have spent two weeks with her and her mind has blown mine, but i don't feel a great need to spend another 800 pages in her company (she has written only two novels). i may, however, read her plays.
lily piper may be one of the most fabulous literary creations of all time.
so, i found this novel picaresque, or at least somewhat picaresque. it seems clearly picaresque to me when frances is in the narrative. i don't have a tremendous passion for the picaresque and the rocambolesque. i like my stories neat and real and possibly tidy. this is sprawling and untidy, even though almost all the strands are tied at the end.
it is also an extraordinarily quirky and strange novel, though i've seen reviewers say that it is a straight and ordinary read. this is my explanation: canadian literature is invariably quirky, but if you are canadian you won't notice it. that's how we know which reviewers are canadians.
it took me two weeks to read this. it's a long time. frances' adventures, while fascinating and absolutely crazy, didn't draw me in enough to pull long reading stretches and i think that overall the novel might have gained from being shorter and on fewer tracks.
but i'm quibbling. this story belongs to mercedes, frances, and lily. materia is sacrificed at the altar of the multi-generational format, which is a shame because her madness is so, so interesting. women stay alive by going mad. it happens in books over and over. it happens in life. we stay alive by going mad.
but the story belongs to the three sisters and this is an exceptional sister story. this is what it shows: that sisterhood (the familial kind) is tremendously powerful but also a force so strong that it must be reined in gently and firmly, and never allowed to get out of control. sisterhood can keep you sane and happy and make you feel deeply loved in the midst of terrible mayhem -- and kill you the next moment. i speak as someone who has three sisters. sisters who have survived three or four world wars together may not be able to remain good to each other. when their love turns poisonous, they can choose to stay and be poisoned, or leave. there is an extraordinary act of love toward the end. it concerns frances and lily. watch for it.
i don't know what it is with the violence of fathers. i wish i knew.
this book is listed here on goodreads in many lesbian lists. if you are reading it for the lesbian story you'll have to wait a good long time, because it takes place at the very end. if it had been stuck in the middle, fewer people might have remembered it and thus bothered to classify this book as a lesbian book. there is a queer undertone under all of it, though, and the lesbian story is extremely beautiful. still, i would not consider this a lesbian book.
i think i may be done with anne-marie macdonald. i have spent two weeks with her and her mind has blown mine, but i don't feel a great need to spend another 800 pages in her company (she has written only two novels). i may, however, read her plays.
lily piper may be one of the most fabulous literary creations of all time.
April 3, 2010
A novel full of dark secrets, revealed gradually over the course of its immense length. I had this book on my shelf for over three years before attempting to read it, wondering how the author would sustain my interest over its 560-plus pages. And, once making the bold attempt to finally pick-up the book, I had difficulty putting it down at times.
The novel is visual, reminiscent of a screenplay. MacDonald uses a variety of techniques to hook the reader: the rapid mixing of tenses and point-of-view, anchoring the story along pivotal events and replaying those scenes from different vantage points like different camera angles applied for the same screen shot, hiding information in scenes and gradually revealing more clues in subsequent takes of the same scene, using combinations of journal, memory, snappy and irreverent dialogue and tight unconventional narrative that focuses on visual imagery rather than on syntactical propriety - yes, a masterful performance for a first novel, and great learning for emerging novelists.
This story has a resemblance to the King Lear tale but is not as obvious as in recent re-takes such as Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres". The patriarch, James Piper, marries a Lebanese child-bride and begets daughters, some whose mothers are unclear until the end. There is Kathleen the budding opera singer, Frances the evil one, Mercedes the pious one, and the crippled Lilly the saint. Incest is at the core, which hobbles and fractures the family over a time horizon spanning the dawn of the twentieth century to the 1950's
Pivotal events such as Kathleen's tragic birthing of twins and its series of catastrophic aftershocks, Frances' shooting and the events that precede and follow, the unravelling of what happened to Kathleen in New York - are all launching points to move the story forward and grip the reader in a non-stop read.
The four sisters emerge gradually from their childhood as the indistinguishable offspring of James Piper, into fully flushed characters with different personalities and histories over the time span of this novel. Unfortunately, Momma, or Materia their Lebanese mother, gets no accolades for the girls' destiny, apart from a few Arabic words they banter around, and the occasional Middle Eastern dish they prepare for James. Daddy, in his twisted, well meaning way, gets all the credit for the disasters that befell their lives.
A great read, I recommend it.
The novel is visual, reminiscent of a screenplay. MacDonald uses a variety of techniques to hook the reader: the rapid mixing of tenses and point-of-view, anchoring the story along pivotal events and replaying those scenes from different vantage points like different camera angles applied for the same screen shot, hiding information in scenes and gradually revealing more clues in subsequent takes of the same scene, using combinations of journal, memory, snappy and irreverent dialogue and tight unconventional narrative that focuses on visual imagery rather than on syntactical propriety - yes, a masterful performance for a first novel, and great learning for emerging novelists.
This story has a resemblance to the King Lear tale but is not as obvious as in recent re-takes such as Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres". The patriarch, James Piper, marries a Lebanese child-bride and begets daughters, some whose mothers are unclear until the end. There is Kathleen the budding opera singer, Frances the evil one, Mercedes the pious one, and the crippled Lilly the saint. Incest is at the core, which hobbles and fractures the family over a time horizon spanning the dawn of the twentieth century to the 1950's
Pivotal events such as Kathleen's tragic birthing of twins and its series of catastrophic aftershocks, Frances' shooting and the events that precede and follow, the unravelling of what happened to Kathleen in New York - are all launching points to move the story forward and grip the reader in a non-stop read.
The four sisters emerge gradually from their childhood as the indistinguishable offspring of James Piper, into fully flushed characters with different personalities and histories over the time span of this novel. Unfortunately, Momma, or Materia their Lebanese mother, gets no accolades for the girls' destiny, apart from a few Arabic words they banter around, and the occasional Middle Eastern dish they prepare for James. Daddy, in his twisted, well meaning way, gets all the credit for the disasters that befell their lives.
A great read, I recommend it.
August 28, 2017
This is a novel set in a coal mining community in Canada and spans from before World War I, through the roaring 20s, and the great depression, as it follows the story of the Piper family.
It follows the characters of James Piper as he marries his child bride Materia, who comes from a conservative Catholic Lebonese family, and due to the scandal of their marriage, is disinherited. They start to have children, and then everything starts to get twisted. It appears that Mr Piper has way too much of a liking for young girls, and especially one of his own daughters.
The book covers many dark themes: statutory rape, rape, suicide, incest, depression, prostitution.
But, even besides all of the above, I actually found myself to be bored while reading this. I really wanted to start skim reading at one point, and then really contemplated giving up on it altogether. But I did push through, and it was an intriguing story, just not something that really gripped me.
It follows the characters of James Piper as he marries his child bride Materia, who comes from a conservative Catholic Lebonese family, and due to the scandal of their marriage, is disinherited. They start to have children, and then everything starts to get twisted. It appears that Mr Piper has way too much of a liking for young girls, and especially one of his own daughters.
The book covers many dark themes: statutory rape, rape, suicide, incest, depression, prostitution.
But, even besides all of the above, I actually found myself to be bored while reading this. I really wanted to start skim reading at one point, and then really contemplated giving up on it altogether. But I did push through, and it was an intriguing story, just not something that really gripped me.
November 1, 2017
One of those cases that I wonder if I read a different book than everyone else. I’m not going to give this book anymore of my time by writing a detailed review. The only reason I’m giving it two stars is because I did actually finish it and the beginning was interesting. Then it just dragged on and on until my eyes glazed over. Nope.
July 28, 2015
Sometimes the best books are the books that are actually more than one story. Fall On Your Knees is a difficult book to summarize, or review, in a way that could do it justice. It is one of those sweeping multi-generational pieces of historical fiction, but at the same time it’s really just a story about four sisters. Against the backdrop of Cape Breton Island and New York City from the turn of the 20th century all the way to the advent of World War II, Ann-Marie MacDonald shows us how the good and bad actions we take in life ripple outward to touch the lives of everyone around us.
MacDonald’s narrative is cyclical and self-referential. We don’t find out who the narrator is until the very end (though you can probably guess after a while). Though mostly linear, there are flashbacks throughout, and a detailled accounting of Kathleen’s time in New York is deferred to the penulimate section for dramatic effect. The story’s power comes from how the setting around the main characters changes, almost like a time-lapse video. When James and Materia marry, their corner of Cape Breton Island is unremarkable and undistinguished. We get to watch a town spring up, miners’ strike, the devastation of war, and the Great Depression. While the characters grow older, go to school, take or change vocations, the story that MacDonald tells never seems to change. It’s always about the tension between the good and evil parts of the soul, that desire to do right by each other and that temptation to be mischievous.
It’s the nature of a character-driven book such as this that it’s hard to identify protagonists and antagonists. Each character takes their turn at both; much as in real life, it’s largely a matter of perspective. Even in cases where the character seems more villainous than not, like James, or more saint than sinner, like Lily, their actions bely that simplified morality.
When James marries Materia over her parents’ disapproval, it seems for about two and a half pages that Fall On Your Knees will be a love story. Rugged Canadian of Irish descent makes good with daughter of Lebanese immigrants, settles down, and becomes a respected piano tuner. MacDonald lets us cling to this vision, as I said, for a few pages, spinning out the fantasy that James and Materia might be happy together. Having manipulated us by presenting it as a love-match between a precocious young woman and a headstrong young man, she pivots, pulls off the blinders, and shows us the other perspective:
So, love story, denied, or rather, aborted. Passion fizzles out to be replaced only by a kind of bewildered regret, which soon kindles resentment. James has such ambition: he orders a crate of books—a crate!—from England with the intention of becoming an educated, well-read, learned man. He wants to move in higher circles than he was born into. And he is frustrated when it becomes clear that Materia will be more hindrance than help in this regard. It’s not her fault; she was raised in a sheltered way, and she is so very young. Yet MacDonald gives her ambition as well: she discovers her love for performing, for playing the piano for vaudeville acts. What might Materia have become if James had believed in and supported her instead of shunned her?
It’s interesting to note what doesn’t happen in Materia and James’ marriage. As far as we know, James never cheats on her (with the one exception, as we learn at the end, but that is … different). He does not beat her regularly—there are moments when he hits her, yes, and MacDonald rightly portrays these as the inexcusable acts they are. He doesn’t leave her (unless you count going to war). I mention these things, because in spite of the evident dissatisfaction on both sides, these two try to muddle through. On Materia’s part, it’s likely that she sees little other choice, especially after Mercedes and Frances are born. On James’ part, it’s that he wants to be seen as a good man. And good men don’t abandon their wives and families, right? I can’t help but feel like some of this subtext is grounded inexorably in the period: in a more contemporary setting, Fall On Your Knees would involve messy affairs, fast cars, divorce, and in the inevitable movie adaptation, a car chase and a running-through-the-airport scene.
Reading this book a second time, of course, means that I have the benefit of what little I remembered about it. I don’t know if I completely comprehended the foreshadowing of James’ demon when I first read this book; this time around, of course, it feels rather heavy-handed. But it seems like that is the point:
MacDonald keeps the specifics of what happens vague until the end of the book, but she foreshadows early on that James cannot outsmart his demon forever. With this, she declares, “This is a tragedy.” For a book so steeped in Catholic symbolism, there is a strong whiff of Calvinist determinism to this: James is destined to survive the war; Kathleen is destined to seek her fortune in New York; all are destined for tragedy.
MacDonald continues in this tenor with the trio of Mercedes, Frances, and Lily. With the first two, Materia’s influence is more pronounced: Mercedes grows up staunchly Catholic, and she and Frances share with their mother a muddled, fairy-talesque use of Arabic words to communicate and commiserate. These two fill the void of motherhood for Lily, who never gets to know either Materia or Kathleen.
It’s particularly interesting how Mercedes’ life resembles that of her parents. Like James, she ends up making many sacrifices for her family. She takes on jobs she doesn’t necessarily want, puts off her own ambitions, studies by correspondence rather than going to university in person. Mercedes tries to dress these sacrifices in humility, like a good Catholic, and I appreciate the way MacDonald draws out the irony and pride that taints her actions:
Mercedes in her hubris is a recognizable stereotype of someone we all know. Her genuine desire to do good through her sacrifices is mixed with the yearning for recognition she feels her martyrdom must bring. And when it doesn’t—or when someone spurns it deliberately, as Lily does by rejecting the Lourdes plan—she can only recover by reframing what happens in light of faith and her own ego. Well, if Lily doesn’t want her leg healed, doesn’t want to be whole, she must be possessed! In this way Mercedes justifies her past sacrifice and reassures herself that neither she nor her interpretation of her faith could be wrong; the world simply hasn’t lived up to its promise.
In both Mercedes and Frances, even more so than in their father, we see how people grow up and change in the unlikeliest of ways. Mercedes is so full of dreams of marrying and settling down with a family, even if it is with the Jewish boy next door. And Frances—wild Frances, showgirl Frances, sex worker Frances … would she ever have thought she would be the mothering type? Though Frances probably undergoes the most dramatic of changes, it is just another manifestation of MacDonald’s theme that our lives—while seemingly driven by destiny—are unpredictable, malleable, and full of surprises.
Lily is interesting in that, for the majority of her time in the story, she is not really a protagonist or antagonist at all, but rather an object on which other characters enact their designs. Mercedes mothers Lily, raises Lily, pities Lily, loves Lily, and harbours the secret hope that Lily might be a saint. Lily being a saint is far more preferable to Mercedes being a saint, of course, because being a saint is a sucky job. You have to suffer—physically, in Lily’s case—and be ever so holy. Being the sister of a saint, the person who first recognized their sainthood, is a much better gig.
Lily is an excuse for Frances to embrace her wilder side. Don’t forget that, originally, the siblings went Kathleen, Mercedes, and then Frances in order of age. Frances was the youngest child, the baby. It’s only after the epoch that Mercedes suddenly becomes the eldest and Frances the middle child. So it’s interesting to see them take up the stereotypical mantles of those titles: Mercedes becomes the responsible one, and Frances can be the wild one, because James can pin his hopes and dreams on Lily once more.
I really can’t do justice to this book in a review of any length. I haven’t even scratched the surface of the themes MacDonald weaves throughout it. I could go on to talk about racism, about the effects of war at home, about the march of history, family, and religion. As for the characters, who indisputably make the book what it is, I have only managed to give the briefest overview of what makes them so complex and well-realized.
So let’s finish off by talking about Lily at the end of the book, by which I really mean, of course, talking about Kathleen in New York.
I remembered James’ demon, but I did not remember the twist that MacDonald introduces during Kathleen’s time in New York. We learn early on that James goes to retrieve her because she has fallen in love, ostensibly with a black man. MacDonald carefully shapes our expectations in such a way that when the details come to light, it’s clever. She plays both on our heteronormative expectations of society in general as well as our expectations of that time period. This is just another facet in the way that MacDonald gently probes the layers of people’s personalities. Like so many other minor characters in this book, Rose takes on a life of her own without stealing the stage. Fall On Your Knees is one of those special novels that manage to contain more of a universe than most: a true microcosm rather than the two-dimensional set that falls apart if you view it from another angle.
Some books capitalize on a single tragedy, one moment of absolute disaster that has consequences for the rest of the characters’ lives. The plot and conflict then comes from watching them pick up the pieces, if they can, and making their peace where they cannot. Other books, though, capture how life is more properly a series of tragedies, some small, some big. Our lives routinely shatter and reassemble, seemingly on the universe’s whim or of their own accord; we don’t pick up the pieces so much as try to reinterpret the map after a geological upheaval. Fall On Your Knees is like this. It’s not just that bad things happen: lots of bad things happen, but good things happen too, and worse still, sometimes it’s hard to tell the two apart. Sometimes when we think we’re doing good we are actually doing the most harm—and vice versa. In these respects, this book reminds me a lot of that other inexpressibly wonderful story, A Fine Balance . However, Fall On Your Knees feels a little more optimistic in its prognosis for its characters. There is no such thing as “moving on” or “moving past” a tragedy, because in living through it, it changes you. It is just as much a part of you as every good thing that happens. So as MacDonald closes out the book by showing us the time-lapse photographs of the rest of the Pipers’ lives, we get to see the sum over all their histories.
And then Anthony finds Lily, and the story starts over again.
This is a book that sprawls. It is beautifully written, MacDonald’s style being without parallel here. I first read her play Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) in first-year English, and that’s what led me to Fall On Your Knees. Sometime after that I think I also read The Way the Crow Flies, but it never left as much of a lasting impression on me as this book. For nearly eight years I’ve cited this as one of my favourite novels. But the truth is, I barely remembered the details. I remembered only the exhilaration I felt reading it, the sense that this is so good it’s painful.
Yet I put off re-reading it for the longest time. I was scared that if I did, I wouldn’t like it as much. I would discover that my memory is more false than normal, that it just isn’t as good as I thought it was. I didn’t want that to happen.
This is my 1000th review on Goodreads, though. I could lie and say I don’t care, but breaking into four digits does feel pretty special. I put a lot of time and effort into these reviews, so to say that I’ve written so many is something worth celebrating. To do that, I wanted to review a very special book—and what better than the book I didn’t want to re-read?
I was a fool; I should have had more faith. Fall On Your Knees is every bit as good as it was the first time I read it—maybe more. It cannot offer answers or reassurance, but instead only the certainty that life is complex and difficult. This is a book that sprawls, not just because it covers multiple generations and a dynamic network of characters, but because their stories have no clear starting or stopping points. Unlike a classical tragedy, which ends in the clarity of the protagonist’s death, these characters have to go on living.
This is the truth of Fall On Your Knees and the inadequacy of the novel form that it exposes: stories don’t end after the tragedy is dealt with. As much as we might like, we cannot boil down our judgement of a person to “did they do good?” or “were they a good person?” Life is a series of events, good or bad or a mixture as determined by how we react—but every event shatters us, changes us. Life is the act of continuously rebuilding ourselves. The story does not stop, never stops, as long as we are there to shatter and rebuild, over and over.
And so I’m not going to stop.
Here’s to the next thousand.
MacDonald’s narrative is cyclical and self-referential. We don’t find out who the narrator is until the very end (though you can probably guess after a while). Though mostly linear, there are flashbacks throughout, and a detailled accounting of Kathleen’s time in New York is deferred to the penulimate section for dramatic effect. The story’s power comes from how the setting around the main characters changes, almost like a time-lapse video. When James and Materia marry, their corner of Cape Breton Island is unremarkable and undistinguished. We get to watch a town spring up, miners’ strike, the devastation of war, and the Great Depression. While the characters grow older, go to school, take or change vocations, the story that MacDonald tells never seems to change. It’s always about the tension between the good and evil parts of the soul, that desire to do right by each other and that temptation to be mischievous.
It’s the nature of a character-driven book such as this that it’s hard to identify protagonists and antagonists. Each character takes their turn at both; much as in real life, it’s largely a matter of perspective. Even in cases where the character seems more villainous than not, like James, or more saint than sinner, like Lily, their actions bely that simplified morality.
When James marries Materia over her parents’ disapproval, it seems for about two and a half pages that Fall On Your Knees will be a love story. Rugged Canadian of Irish descent makes good with daughter of Lebanese immigrants, settles down, and becomes a respected piano tuner. MacDonald lets us cling to this vision, as I said, for a few pages, spinning out the fantasy that James and Materia might be happy together. Having manipulated us by presenting it as a love-match between a precocious young woman and a headstrong young man, she pivots, pulls off the blinders, and shows us the other perspective:
But deep down he winced at the thought of showing Materia to anyone. He was grateful they lived in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her any more, he did. It was just that, recently, it had struck him taht other people might think there was something strange. They might think he’d married a child.
So, love story, denied, or rather, aborted. Passion fizzles out to be replaced only by a kind of bewildered regret, which soon kindles resentment. James has such ambition: he orders a crate of books—a crate!—from England with the intention of becoming an educated, well-read, learned man. He wants to move in higher circles than he was born into. And he is frustrated when it becomes clear that Materia will be more hindrance than help in this regard. It’s not her fault; she was raised in a sheltered way, and she is so very young. Yet MacDonald gives her ambition as well: she discovers her love for performing, for playing the piano for vaudeville acts. What might Materia have become if James had believed in and supported her instead of shunned her?
It’s interesting to note what doesn’t happen in Materia and James’ marriage. As far as we know, James never cheats on her (with the one exception, as we learn at the end, but that is … different). He does not beat her regularly—there are moments when he hits her, yes, and MacDonald rightly portrays these as the inexcusable acts they are. He doesn’t leave her (unless you count going to war). I mention these things, because in spite of the evident dissatisfaction on both sides, these two try to muddle through. On Materia’s part, it’s likely that she sees little other choice, especially after Mercedes and Frances are born. On James’ part, it’s that he wants to be seen as a good man. And good men don’t abandon their wives and families, right? I can’t help but feel like some of this subtext is grounded inexorably in the period: in a more contemporary setting, Fall On Your Knees would involve messy affairs, fast cars, divorce, and in the inevitable movie adaptation, a car chase and a running-through-the-airport scene.
Reading this book a second time, of course, means that I have the benefit of what little I remembered about it. I don’t know if I completely comprehended the foreshadowing of James’ demon when I first read this book; this time around, of course, it feels rather heavy-handed. But it seems like that is the point:
The next day, James outsmarts the demon for the second time. He enlists.…
… Materia arrives at Mount Carmel and hurries over to Mary’s grotto. There she prostrates herself as best she can, what with her unborn cargo, and gives thanks to Our Lady for sending The War.
MacDonald keeps the specifics of what happens vague until the end of the book, but she foreshadows early on that James cannot outsmart his demon forever. With this, she declares, “This is a tragedy.” For a book so steeped in Catholic symbolism, there is a strong whiff of Calvinist determinism to this: James is destined to survive the war; Kathleen is destined to seek her fortune in New York; all are destined for tragedy.
MacDonald continues in this tenor with the trio of Mercedes, Frances, and Lily. With the first two, Materia’s influence is more pronounced: Mercedes grows up staunchly Catholic, and she and Frances share with their mother a muddled, fairy-talesque use of Arabic words to communicate and commiserate. These two fill the void of motherhood for Lily, who never gets to know either Materia or Kathleen.
It’s particularly interesting how Mercedes’ life resembles that of her parents. Like James, she ends up making many sacrifices for her family. She takes on jobs she doesn’t necessarily want, puts off her own ambitions, studies by correspondence rather than going to university in person. Mercedes tries to dress these sacrifices in humility, like a good Catholic, and I appreciate the way MacDonald draws out the irony and pride that taints her actions:
Tears fill Mercedes’ eyes. It is not fair that Frances should bask in Daddy’s affection and the approval of sundry shopkeepers for something that ought to have her hiding her face in shame. It is not fair that Sister Saint Eustace managed to make Mercedes feel like the bad one—when everyone knows that she’s the good one. It is not fair that Frances will have a baby, while Mercedes was denied a husband. None of it is fair, but that is not why Mercedes is weeping freely against her pillow…. Everyone seems to think that motherhood is the best thing that could possibly happen to [Frances]. Everyone but Mercedes. For she knows that once Frances has a child, Frances will no longer need a mother.
Mercedes in her hubris is a recognizable stereotype of someone we all know. Her genuine desire to do good through her sacrifices is mixed with the yearning for recognition she feels her martyrdom must bring. And when it doesn’t—or when someone spurns it deliberately, as Lily does by rejecting the Lourdes plan—she can only recover by reframing what happens in light of faith and her own ego. Well, if Lily doesn’t want her leg healed, doesn’t want to be whole, she must be possessed! In this way Mercedes justifies her past sacrifice and reassures herself that neither she nor her interpretation of her faith could be wrong; the world simply hasn’t lived up to its promise.
In both Mercedes and Frances, even more so than in their father, we see how people grow up and change in the unlikeliest of ways. Mercedes is so full of dreams of marrying and settling down with a family, even if it is with the Jewish boy next door. And Frances—wild Frances, showgirl Frances, sex worker Frances … would she ever have thought she would be the mothering type? Though Frances probably undergoes the most dramatic of changes, it is just another manifestation of MacDonald’s theme that our lives—while seemingly driven by destiny—are unpredictable, malleable, and full of surprises.
Lily is interesting in that, for the majority of her time in the story, she is not really a protagonist or antagonist at all, but rather an object on which other characters enact their designs. Mercedes mothers Lily, raises Lily, pities Lily, loves Lily, and harbours the secret hope that Lily might be a saint. Lily being a saint is far more preferable to Mercedes being a saint, of course, because being a saint is a sucky job. You have to suffer—physically, in Lily’s case—and be ever so holy. Being the sister of a saint, the person who first recognized their sainthood, is a much better gig.
Lily is an excuse for Frances to embrace her wilder side. Don’t forget that, originally, the siblings went Kathleen, Mercedes, and then Frances in order of age. Frances was the youngest child, the baby. It’s only after the epoch that Mercedes suddenly becomes the eldest and Frances the middle child. So it’s interesting to see them take up the stereotypical mantles of those titles: Mercedes becomes the responsible one, and Frances can be the wild one, because James can pin his hopes and dreams on Lily once more.
I really can’t do justice to this book in a review of any length. I haven’t even scratched the surface of the themes MacDonald weaves throughout it. I could go on to talk about racism, about the effects of war at home, about the march of history, family, and religion. As for the characters, who indisputably make the book what it is, I have only managed to give the briefest overview of what makes them so complex and well-realized.
So let’s finish off by talking about Lily at the end of the book, by which I really mean, of course, talking about Kathleen in New York.
I remembered James’ demon, but I did not remember the twist that MacDonald introduces during Kathleen’s time in New York. We learn early on that James goes to retrieve her because she has fallen in love, ostensibly with a black man. MacDonald carefully shapes our expectations in such a way that when the details come to light, it’s clever. She plays both on our heteronormative expectations of society in general as well as our expectations of that time period. This is just another facet in the way that MacDonald gently probes the layers of people’s personalities. Like so many other minor characters in this book, Rose takes on a life of her own without stealing the stage. Fall On Your Knees is one of those special novels that manage to contain more of a universe than most: a true microcosm rather than the two-dimensional set that falls apart if you view it from another angle.
Some books capitalize on a single tragedy, one moment of absolute disaster that has consequences for the rest of the characters’ lives. The plot and conflict then comes from watching them pick up the pieces, if they can, and making their peace where they cannot. Other books, though, capture how life is more properly a series of tragedies, some small, some big. Our lives routinely shatter and reassemble, seemingly on the universe’s whim or of their own accord; we don’t pick up the pieces so much as try to reinterpret the map after a geological upheaval. Fall On Your Knees is like this. It’s not just that bad things happen: lots of bad things happen, but good things happen too, and worse still, sometimes it’s hard to tell the two apart. Sometimes when we think we’re doing good we are actually doing the most harm—and vice versa. In these respects, this book reminds me a lot of that other inexpressibly wonderful story, A Fine Balance . However, Fall On Your Knees feels a little more optimistic in its prognosis for its characters. There is no such thing as “moving on” or “moving past” a tragedy, because in living through it, it changes you. It is just as much a part of you as every good thing that happens. So as MacDonald closes out the book by showing us the time-lapse photographs of the rest of the Pipers’ lives, we get to see the sum over all their histories.
And then Anthony finds Lily, and the story starts over again.
This is a book that sprawls. It is beautifully written, MacDonald’s style being without parallel here. I first read her play Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) in first-year English, and that’s what led me to Fall On Your Knees. Sometime after that I think I also read The Way the Crow Flies, but it never left as much of a lasting impression on me as this book. For nearly eight years I’ve cited this as one of my favourite novels. But the truth is, I barely remembered the details. I remembered only the exhilaration I felt reading it, the sense that this is so good it’s painful.
Yet I put off re-reading it for the longest time. I was scared that if I did, I wouldn’t like it as much. I would discover that my memory is more false than normal, that it just isn’t as good as I thought it was. I didn’t want that to happen.
This is my 1000th review on Goodreads, though. I could lie and say I don’t care, but breaking into four digits does feel pretty special. I put a lot of time and effort into these reviews, so to say that I’ve written so many is something worth celebrating. To do that, I wanted to review a very special book—and what better than the book I didn’t want to re-read?
I was a fool; I should have had more faith. Fall On Your Knees is every bit as good as it was the first time I read it—maybe more. It cannot offer answers or reassurance, but instead only the certainty that life is complex and difficult. This is a book that sprawls, not just because it covers multiple generations and a dynamic network of characters, but because their stories have no clear starting or stopping points. Unlike a classical tragedy, which ends in the clarity of the protagonist’s death, these characters have to go on living.
This is the truth of Fall On Your Knees and the inadequacy of the novel form that it exposes: stories don’t end after the tragedy is dealt with. As much as we might like, we cannot boil down our judgement of a person to “did they do good?” or “were they a good person?” Life is a series of events, good or bad or a mixture as determined by how we react—but every event shatters us, changes us. Life is the act of continuously rebuilding ourselves. The story does not stop, never stops, as long as we are there to shatter and rebuild, over and over.
And so I’m not going to stop.
Here’s to the next thousand.
January 6, 2023
La concezione moral-filosofica del pensiero greco era quella, detta in parole semplici, che le colpe dei padri ricadono sempre sui figli, per cui le ire delle divinità si concentrano sull’intera stirpe laddove il padre abbia commesso un peccato di superbia.
Ebbene, potrei dire che la medesima concezione viene espressa dalla scrittrice in questo romanzo che sembra non finire mai, ho letto i commenti di altri lettori che sono usciti estasiati dalla lettura, io invece ne sono uscita stremata. Le vicende si snodano nei primi decenni del Novecento a Cape Breton, una isoletta del Canada che è un puntino invisibile nelle carte geografiche, un luogo in cui si sono raccolti negli anni immigrati di varie razze, rifugiati dal vecchio continente e anche oltre, in cerca di lavoro, e prendono il via dal matrimonio del giovane James Piper , di origini scozzesi e irlandesi, con la tredicenne Materia Mahmoud, di famiglia libanese di religione cattolica. Da questa unione, nata sotto auspici infausti, nasceranno tre figlie, le figure centrali del romanzo, Kathleen, Mercedes e Frances, le cui vite saranno letteralmente infestate da amori morbosi, figli illegittimi, morti misteriose, fatti cruenti e tragici che si susseguono nella parte centrale del libro rimanendo però come in sospeso, in una atmosfera rarefatta, perché la scrittrice ne accenna appena, lasciando nella mente del lettore immagini macabre che colpiscono la fantasia nell’immediato, ma poi, ragionandoci, ci si domanda il perché, si cerca di comprendere gli eventi di questa famiglia “sfortunata”. E qua viene il bello, “il perché “ lo scopriamo solo nelle pagine finali del romanzo, le più belle, le pagine del diario di Kathleen, pagine intrise di amore, di dolcezza, di passione e di entusiasmo per una vita che prometteva per lei un gran futuro come cantante lirica. Se il romanzo fosse stato più breve, se gli intrecci fossero stati meno misteriosi, se la storia non fosse stata costellata da personaggi secondari di cui non si capisce bene il ruolo, se la mia lettura non fosse stata un continuo punto interrogativo, avrei probabilmente goduto per una scrittura lirica ed intensa, mi sarei affezionata a qualcuna delle protagoniste di questo mondo femminile pieno di contraddizioni, misterioso e imperfetto come l’albero genealogico della famiglia che Mercedes disegna all’inizio del romanzo e che ricompare alla fine nelle mani dei sopravvissuti, in cui le verità sono finalmente svelate. Non è andata così.
Ebbene, potrei dire che la medesima concezione viene espressa dalla scrittrice in questo romanzo che sembra non finire mai, ho letto i commenti di altri lettori che sono usciti estasiati dalla lettura, io invece ne sono uscita stremata. Le vicende si snodano nei primi decenni del Novecento a Cape Breton, una isoletta del Canada che è un puntino invisibile nelle carte geografiche, un luogo in cui si sono raccolti negli anni immigrati di varie razze, rifugiati dal vecchio continente e anche oltre, in cerca di lavoro, e prendono il via dal matrimonio del giovane James Piper , di origini scozzesi e irlandesi, con la tredicenne Materia Mahmoud, di famiglia libanese di religione cattolica. Da questa unione, nata sotto auspici infausti, nasceranno tre figlie, le figure centrali del romanzo, Kathleen, Mercedes e Frances, le cui vite saranno letteralmente infestate da amori morbosi, figli illegittimi, morti misteriose, fatti cruenti e tragici che si susseguono nella parte centrale del libro rimanendo però come in sospeso, in una atmosfera rarefatta, perché la scrittrice ne accenna appena, lasciando nella mente del lettore immagini macabre che colpiscono la fantasia nell’immediato, ma poi, ragionandoci, ci si domanda il perché, si cerca di comprendere gli eventi di questa famiglia “sfortunata”. E qua viene il bello, “il perché “ lo scopriamo solo nelle pagine finali del romanzo, le più belle, le pagine del diario di Kathleen, pagine intrise di amore, di dolcezza, di passione e di entusiasmo per una vita che prometteva per lei un gran futuro come cantante lirica. Se il romanzo fosse stato più breve, se gli intrecci fossero stati meno misteriosi, se la storia non fosse stata costellata da personaggi secondari di cui non si capisce bene il ruolo, se la mia lettura non fosse stata un continuo punto interrogativo, avrei probabilmente goduto per una scrittura lirica ed intensa, mi sarei affezionata a qualcuna delle protagoniste di questo mondo femminile pieno di contraddizioni, misterioso e imperfetto come l’albero genealogico della famiglia che Mercedes disegna all’inizio del romanzo e che ricompare alla fine nelle mani dei sopravvissuti, in cui le verità sono finalmente svelate. Non è andata così.
June 23, 2015
Where do I even start with this one? This is heavy, heavy stuff, full to the brim with family secrets. And some of these are some pretty hardcore secrets. When asked by a co-worker what I was reading lately, I barely knew what to say - "Well, this book about a family, and their gross father, and there's a lot of incest..." But while there is definitely a very strong undercurrent of incesty feelings and behavior running through the entire novel, there is much more to it.
It's hard to give a high level summary of the plot without diving into all of the intricacies. Basically, it's a family saga about 4 sisters and their father living in Cape Breton that spans maybe 30-40 years (I'm too lazy to officially work out the timeline in my head!) There are several main events that you learn about slowly, by jumping back and forth in time until all of the mysteries are finally revealed. This storytelling device works well here - it never feels disjointed, and makes it more exciting (as well as, admittedly, icky).
None of the (main) characters are particularly likeable. They all have some redeeming qualities - Frances is bright and vivacious and fun before her rebellious behavior just becomes over the top, Mercedes really is just trying to take care of her family, even as she comes off as overly pious and condescending, and Lily is altogether innocent, but she does certain things that make you want to strangle her. Even Materia, who is for the most part a victim forced into a strange and vaguely sadistic marriage at the age of 12, didn't elicit full sympathy from me. Often, not connecting with any of the characters on a personal level ruins a book for me, but in this case I was completely fascinated. Having had a very normal childhood with very normal parents and a sister, reading about a family like this was compelling and satisfyingly twisted.
To me, this book was dark and sad, but there was a beautiful quality to it too. It wasn't necessarily the best time for me to read it, as the weather is finally becoming sunny and gorgeous - I feel this type of sordid book is more suited for the dark depths of winter. The prose is hazy and wistful and sad, and it's just such a good story. I'm sorry that it took me so long to become aware of this book and to pick it up, and at 584 pages it was an effort, but it was well, well worth it.
It's hard to give a high level summary of the plot without diving into all of the intricacies. Basically, it's a family saga about 4 sisters and their father living in Cape Breton that spans maybe 30-40 years (I'm too lazy to officially work out the timeline in my head!) There are several main events that you learn about slowly, by jumping back and forth in time until all of the mysteries are finally revealed. This storytelling device works well here - it never feels disjointed, and makes it more exciting (as well as, admittedly, icky).
None of the (main) characters are particularly likeable. They all have some redeeming qualities - Frances is bright and vivacious and fun before her rebellious behavior just becomes over the top, Mercedes really is just trying to take care of her family, even as she comes off as overly pious and condescending, and Lily is altogether innocent, but she does certain things that make you want to strangle her. Even Materia, who is for the most part a victim forced into a strange and vaguely sadistic marriage at the age of 12, didn't elicit full sympathy from me. Often, not connecting with any of the characters on a personal level ruins a book for me, but in this case I was completely fascinated. Having had a very normal childhood with very normal parents and a sister, reading about a family like this was compelling and satisfyingly twisted.
To me, this book was dark and sad, but there was a beautiful quality to it too. It wasn't necessarily the best time for me to read it, as the weather is finally becoming sunny and gorgeous - I feel this type of sordid book is more suited for the dark depths of winter. The prose is hazy and wistful and sad, and it's just such a good story. I'm sorry that it took me so long to become aware of this book and to pick it up, and at 584 pages it was an effort, but it was well, well worth it.
October 7, 2020
I know now that I have read the saddest book of 2020.
I love it.
I hate it.
I mourn it.
I cherish it.
I just want to go back and fix it but I can’t. I just have to drink my tea and listen. I guess.
You will have to read to the very last word if you want to know why the book is called fall on your knees.
“Having experienced her own disappearance, she’s conscious of how important it is for people to be seen, so when she looks at them – even the blind one - she also looks for them, just in case they to have got lost and need finding.”
I love it.
I hate it.
I mourn it.
I cherish it.
I just want to go back and fix it but I can’t. I just have to drink my tea and listen. I guess.
You will have to read to the very last word if you want to know why the book is called fall on your knees.
“Having experienced her own disappearance, she’s conscious of how important it is for people to be seen, so when she looks at them – even the blind one - she also looks for them, just in case they to have got lost and need finding.”
May 31, 2012
I loved this book! It was beautiful, witty, poignant, sad and educational.James was a sick,sick man. Families can really have so many dark secrets.
May 17, 2021
MacDonald( the Canadian actress and playwright)has truely shown the depth and beauty of her talent in her debut novel, Fall on Your Knees. Her words flow with ease, allowing the story to unfold as though real and not on a page. The historical detail, layers of generations and depth of the characters draw you in as you live their lives with them.
Fall on Your Knees is a story of a family from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It is centered around four sisters and their relationships with each other and with their father.
Set in coal-mining community of Nova Scotia, FYK follows the sisters as they come across the hardships and roles they must have in that particular culture.
Set in the early 1900s, FYK also venturs from Canada and shines light on the Jazz scene in NYC during the 1920s as well as WW1.
This is a book I am excited to read a second or third time.
It took me longer than I had anticipated to finish this book. I savored her words as I cringed at the events. The hardships and lives her characters were born into broke my heart. I felt let down as every male character in the book was more than faulted. Each man had abandoned responsibility for a brief something....Sex, Money, alcohol. Family values and true love among the men were not present. A child's welfare did not matter. Perhaps MacDonald has been wronged by a number of men in her life....if that is so it shows in FYK.
Not quite sure how to end this....it is an excellent book..but now as I am remembering all the events that occured and the hurt and pain I felt through mere words on a page perhaps once was enough.
Fall on Your Knees is a story of a family from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It is centered around four sisters and their relationships with each other and with their father.
Set in coal-mining community of Nova Scotia, FYK follows the sisters as they come across the hardships and roles they must have in that particular culture.
Set in the early 1900s, FYK also venturs from Canada and shines light on the Jazz scene in NYC during the 1920s as well as WW1.
This is a book I am excited to read a second or third time.
It took me longer than I had anticipated to finish this book. I savored her words as I cringed at the events. The hardships and lives her characters were born into broke my heart. I felt let down as every male character in the book was more than faulted. Each man had abandoned responsibility for a brief something....Sex, Money, alcohol. Family values and true love among the men were not present. A child's welfare did not matter. Perhaps MacDonald has been wronged by a number of men in her life....if that is so it shows in FYK.
Not quite sure how to end this....it is an excellent book..but now as I am remembering all the events that occured and the hurt and pain I felt through mere words on a page perhaps once was enough.
December 14, 2017
What to say about this devastating masterpiece? It's the 2nd time I've read it, and while it was hard to read the 1st time, I think re-reading is perhaps worse, because I knew the horrible thing that was coming (incest/rape). I don't really know how Ann-Marie MacDonald writes beautifully about such dark things, telling the intergenerational story of this fucked up family. The voice actor does an incredible job with the audiobook. If you can stomach it, this is a masterpiece, as I said. But fuck is it ever dark.
Full review / personal essay on my blog!
Full review / personal essay on my blog!
June 4, 2023
I have never read a book quite like this one. Beautiful writing, unique and gorgeous metaphors, a wild and primitive yet gorgeous Nova Scotia location, yet with the darkest themes known to mankind. This is not a light read about a family. This is about the most dysfunctional family ever, with secrets, misunderstandings, death, disease, bootlegging, racism, rape, child abuse, prostitution, violence, all tangled up with religion, mostly Catholicism. It also includes a music theme throughout-hymns, blues, Christmas songs, opera, singing, pianos, etc. This is about a mining community that includes people from all over the globe. It is about taking care of family, no matter the morally skewed methods.
I honestly am not sure whether or not I liked this book-I don’t even know if liking it is possible. At first, I would compare it to an auto accident-you simply cannot look away. Then it becomes an unfolding, right up till the last page. In the end, I would say that it is worth the read, as long as you can accept the blunt subject matter, because the characters are so well-drawn.
I honestly am not sure whether or not I liked this book-I don’t even know if liking it is possible. At first, I would compare it to an auto accident-you simply cannot look away. Then it becomes an unfolding, right up till the last page. In the end, I would say that it is worth the read, as long as you can accept the blunt subject matter, because the characters are so well-drawn.
June 3, 2010
I stayed up until 3:30am last night to finish the last 60+ pages of Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees. I'll admit that I am always a bit of a night owl but even I don't stay up that late often. However I just couldn't put this book down. As the book wraps up it just pulls you in like passing a bad car accident. You know it's going to be disturbing and hard to watch but you can't look away.
Fall On Your Knees (Oprah #45)The book follows the Piper family from the late 1890's through several generations of increasingly disturbed individuals. In the beginning of the book James Piper is a piano tuner who ends up running away with Materia Mahmoud, the daughter of one of his clients. Oh, did I mention that Materia is a mere 12 going on 13 at the time?
What comes from their union is the stuff that episodes of Maury Povich are made of. Incest, lies, deception, secrets, and more drama than you can shake a stick at. James is ambitious, self righteous and a bit of a pedophile. His wife Materia is simple, a little childish and resentful of the path her life has taken.
They have three daughters as different as can be. Kathleen, the oldest and the apple of daddy's eye who has an operatic voice of an angel and she knows it. Frances, the wild child and Mercedes, who is very pious and good and who tries desperately to keep her family in line and together but she ends up being sucked into the depravity too, by the end of the book.
I didn't think I would like this book at first. None of the main characters are like-able. In fact, most of the smaller characters are unlike-able as well. These are deeply flawed individuals, making horrible choice after horrible choice and yet I became invested in their story.
Like a bad talk show, the book is filled with many OMG and WTF moments and even a few that left me asking "Wait....WHAT?" as I frantically read on to see what was going to happen next.
Of course I don't get my answers till much later in the book. Ann-Marie MacDonald often reveals major events early but doesn't show the journey that led to those events until much later. The point of view shifts often and you may think you know the story as you read it from one POV, you find that you were very mistaken as the same events is retold through a different character. It kept me guessing and as I finished the book I realized that all was definitely not as it seemed.
It was an extremely dark book, I disliked all the characters and there are very few happy moments but I ended up loving it.
Fall On Your Knees (Oprah #45)The book follows the Piper family from the late 1890's through several generations of increasingly disturbed individuals. In the beginning of the book James Piper is a piano tuner who ends up running away with Materia Mahmoud, the daughter of one of his clients. Oh, did I mention that Materia is a mere 12 going on 13 at the time?
What comes from their union is the stuff that episodes of Maury Povich are made of. Incest, lies, deception, secrets, and more drama than you can shake a stick at. James is ambitious, self righteous and a bit of a pedophile. His wife Materia is simple, a little childish and resentful of the path her life has taken.
They have three daughters as different as can be. Kathleen, the oldest and the apple of daddy's eye who has an operatic voice of an angel and she knows it. Frances, the wild child and Mercedes, who is very pious and good and who tries desperately to keep her family in line and together but she ends up being sucked into the depravity too, by the end of the book.
I didn't think I would like this book at first. None of the main characters are like-able. In fact, most of the smaller characters are unlike-able as well. These are deeply flawed individuals, making horrible choice after horrible choice and yet I became invested in their story.
Like a bad talk show, the book is filled with many OMG and WTF moments and even a few that left me asking "Wait....WHAT?" as I frantically read on to see what was going to happen next.
Of course I don't get my answers till much later in the book. Ann-Marie MacDonald often reveals major events early but doesn't show the journey that led to those events until much later. The point of view shifts often and you may think you know the story as you read it from one POV, you find that you were very mistaken as the same events is retold through a different character. It kept me guessing and as I finished the book I realized that all was definitely not as it seemed.
It was an extremely dark book, I disliked all the characters and there are very few happy moments but I ended up loving it.
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