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Summary: Fall on Your Knees
Review: One of the darkest and most depressing books I have read. If that's what you're looking for, this one is well written.
Rating: 
Summary: Drama on Cape Breton
Review: Fall on Your Knees a book recently published in 1996 is a twisted tale of the dark secrets and events of the piper family. MacDonald incorporates the historical events of the early 20th century into the lives of this family in their search for peace and truth. This book was recommend to me by a teachers and I found it appealing to try a new Canadian author. Once I began reading Fall on Your Knees I became very fascinated as to what would happen next in the lives of the Piper family living in the haunted island of Cape Breton. This book emphasizes many family issues and problems that are quite disturbing to most. MacDonald touches on the issues of betrayal, incest, abuse, sacrifice, jealously and love. Several times through out reading I felt as though I was reading some sort of twisted soap opera. The novel took me through generations of the Piper family I began to feel for the children and the misfortune that they had in their lives. Although many of the issues that MacDonald talks about were extreme most of the underlying troubles in the book dealt with love. MacDonald touches on the love between mother and daughter, father and daughter and sisters. Most people can find it easy to relate to such feelings even if their situation is not so extreme as that of the pipers. MacDonald creates a world in her book that makes ones feel for the family. As I continued reading I hope that something would work out for the family. At times I felt as though the novel was extremely dark and depressing but at these times MacDonald skill in writing and her ability to make the story flow kept me reading. I would recommend this book to any adult or older high school student.
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Summary: A tragic story, beautifully written!
Review: I really loved this novel, I could not put it down.
I still find myself sometimes thinking about the caracters.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written
Review: This book was a joy to read. I found it difficult to get into at first, and even put it down after the first chapter to read something else. I'm so glad I picked it back up, and I'm sure it will be one that I'll read again. This book is beautifully written. I kept finding myself re-reading passages just to soak up the depth of her prose....very unlike me.. I'm normally going at break-neck speed to the next page. Also, I can't tell you the last time I got to the end of a book and found myself surprised at the ending. I was stunned and found myself wondering how she'd managed to keep me so off track. Truly a beautiful saga that will leave you hoping for her next work.
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Summary: A predicable Oprah book!
Review: After hearing Oprahs review on TV I could hardly wait to read this book, but like most of her recommended books it's about another dysfunctional family. I didn't find the book either interesting or entertaining, and the outcome was predicable.
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Summary: Beautifully written and full of surprises!
Review: In the beginning I wanted to just quit reading it. It was frustrating and didn't make any sense. But I kept reading, and I am so glad I did. It is beautifully written and keeps you interested to find out what's really going on and what will happen next...and many times you will be VERY surprised. I loved this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Good Reading
Review: I enjoyed this book, it is easy reading, and I like the way it was written.
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Summary: Luminous Text; Vivid Characters
Review: As a lover of words, I was entranced by Ann-Marie MacDonald's debut novel. The back cover gives so little away, but the critical acclaim creates a curiousity that simply did not give way once I'd opened the book and began to read. The way MacDonald entwines poetry around vivid and unpredictable characters and plot made this a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience. Her evocation of the time-place setting made the Roaring Twenties and Jazz Age jump and jive off the page. While the depiction of the Catholic Church was an exaggeration verging on satire, the humour and larger-than-life quality of the text roped me in nonetheless because there was something so trenchant and human about her characters, flaws, eccentricities, and all. The discovery of Kathleen's lover at the end of the novel was bizarre and yet deeply appropriate as the two represent mirror images of one another and the politics of inter-cultural relations and sexuality that is as relevant to literature studies of identity politics today as it was scandolous back then. Intricate plot, subtle and not-so-subtle artfulness work throughout this novel that I simply could not put down.
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Summary: Sorry, but...
Review: I HATE doing this, but I have now closed Fall on Your Knees and will not bother opening it again. I struggled to about the halfway point, but can go no further. It's not that it's badly written... in fact the prose in places is beautiful. It's not that there's no story... there's bucket-loads of story and the reader is dragged through it at a rate of knots that is sometimes breathtaking. And maybe that's the problem. So far, we've not stopped long enough in one place to care for any of the characters. I really don't care what happens to any of them! Honest, I struggled and struggled to keep going, but boredom finally broke me and I've given up. As one astute reviewer puts it ... "The traumas and tribulations were just never ending, with all the subtlety of a John Phillips Sousa march" ... Well here's a de Sousa fan who prefers the marches! Sorry, but...
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Summary: I want to know this author! I want to shake her!
Review: I am just finishing this long, remarkable book, Fall On Your Knees (though I had to skip to the last, saving, pages in advance). With each page, almost, I wanted to shake this author, I wanted to say, 'How could you write this! How can you write this way?!' I can barely describe it -- raw, seeing 'too much', 'knowing too much', showing 'too much'. But a book with barely measured containment and excellent structure, in a way that I can read it, not want to throw it -- exactly.
Oprah, in her book club, introducing Ann-Marie MacDonald, says amazingly, 'Did you just come out of a mental institution, get yourself together and write this book!?!' I wouldn't have put it quite that way, but, still...
Each time I put the book down I found myself singing the chorus of 'O Holy Night'; the title of the book is exactly appropriate for this story. 'Fall on your knees' in...terrible humility and awe. The characters each have a heroic bent for survival, and fatalistic experiences which form them unknowingly and inexorably all their lives -- when one lets down or changes, another may take over her role. --The power of repressed, horrible experiences, the power of secrets, the skewing power of not telling. The beauty of this careful, constant re-forming of oneself in order to survive and make sense of one's life -- the angels, the daughters -- hear each of their (intertwined) voices.
I can only say, she writes with some humor, or something, which allows a reader to keep on being willing to look at the pictures she draws, though they are stark, rich, unholy and shocking. This writer is very clever (meaning: smart), industrious, poetic, a good, good writer. From the beginning of it, I wanted to find her, go over to her and say: How can you write this book? How can you?! Whatever that means. --It means I am still too close to it to say I am glad I read it, I liked it, it is a very good, amazing, story.
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