Rating: Summary: A jigsaw puzzle Review: Reading this book was like putting together a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, only to be disappointed to see the final picture in the end. This was not an easy book to read, many passages were cryptic and inferred. The sisters were spooky and a bit neurotic. The father James was an incestuous man who instead of keeping his family together, literally tore them apart. The family was one big mess. How anyone could find happiness in such a household, is beyond me. This is not another "Little Women".
Rating: Summary: Richelle's Review Review: I recommend reading this book. The author did a very nice job writing it. The images are vivid, and the plot is believable and interesting from the very beginning. There are many plot twists, right to the end of the book. The main characters are all very memorable and believable. They were also all distinct, with different personalities and motivations. Overall, it is a well-written and interesting book.
Rating: Summary: Better than most Oprah Book Club Choices Review: I don't normally go for Oprah Book Club novels, but this one was really worth the read. It is extremely dark at times, but ultimately very engaging and moving.
Rating: Summary: Another dark, dark Oprah pick Review: As has been the case with so many of Oprah's picks over the years, this is a dark story of a highly disfunctional family. If you've enjoyed Oprah's other picks, you'll like this one. But if you, like me, have tired of the stories of misery and doom, try something a little happier. While a good read, you finish the book feeling depressed and without hope for mankind. I'd prefer to escape to a happier place when I read.
Rating: Summary: Hated It Review: Even years after reading this book (long before it became popular) I can still remember it as one of the most boring, uninteresting and pointless reads of my life. The character's were dull and one-sided, the plot meandering, and the climax unfufilling. I'm saddened that it has become so popular of late, I can think of far more promising books to have in the spotlight such as Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates or Cat's Eye by Atwood. If you want to read a good book, please try one of those instead.
Rating: Summary: Overwrought; lovely writing style Review: As a fan of Canadian literature, I really wanted to like this book. I finished it, but the experience was like rubbernecking at a train wreck. At some point, I just stopped caring about any of the characters. The traumas and tribulations were just never ending, with all the subtlety of a John Phillips Sousa march. The plot started to remind me of a Monty Python skit - oh, yes, well, THAT horrible calamity happened? Well, top THIS! You have to go pretty far over the top for me to start inadvertently laughing (at some truly horrible things) when the next tragedy hits. On the flip side, the picture of Cape Breton culture at the turn of the century was lovely, and the Lebanese history was fascinating. And MacDonald really turns out some beautiful prose. But... overall... the book was sufficiently melodramatic and overwrought that it was not a pleasant reading experience.
Rating: Summary: Addictive and Intense Review: From the very first this book had me hooked. The description of the place and characters made me feel like I had been there and known them all. I grew to like and dislike the "sisters", and the parents all at the same time. fall on Your knees keeps you guessing and gasping. A truly Fab book.
Rating: Summary: I can't decide.... Review: I can't decide about this book. I didn't like it all that much, it was "hard" reading, and I am an avid reader with a large vocab. The story kept you wondering, but most things you could figure out. I just got the impression that the author, who ...say's she "loves surprises & secrets" tried to overwhelm us with secrets. There was so much going on & happening, it wasn't realistic. What a [messed] up family! I would have enjoyed it more if she chose a few secrets or scandals & featured and focused on those
Rating: Summary: A very impressive (if somewhat overrated) literary debut Review: Fall On Your Knees is a most impressive first novel from Anne-Marie MacDonald, previously best known (at least here in Canada) as an actress and playwright (nowadays she's probably best known as the host of Life and Times, a kind of Canadian version of A&E's Biography series). Being a first novel, it has many of the same strengths and weaknesses common to a lot of maiden literary efforts. Ultimately, of all the novels that I've read, the one this most resembles is Steinbeck's East of Eden. A lot of the action in both novels takes place in the same approximate historical era, both make extensive use of biblical imagery and themes, both are (in different ways) about how the sins of a father are visited on his offspring, and how family secrets and lies eventually reverberate through generations like bullets that shatter upon entering the human body and end up wreaking fearful damage in many nooks and crannies. Both novels also in the end suffer somewhat from the fact that they're obviously straining to be Great Books that will also connect with a popular audience. On the plus side, Fall On Your Knees practically throbs on every page with its author's obvious love of language and sheer joy in the storytelling process itself. The story shifts continually back and forth in time and place as it relates the sprawling, multi-generational saga of the Piper and (to a much lesser extent) Mahmoud families of Cape Breton. Unlike so much modern fiction, with it's airless prose, and cramped, crabbed preoccupations (the product, I believe, of too much time spent in creative writing seminars and not enough time spent actually out and about in the world), Fall On Your Knees is a big book about Big Things. Moreover, in focusing mainly on the Piper daughters, Kathleen, Mercedes, (especially) Frances, and Lily, Ms. MacDonald demonstrates demonstrates an exceptional ability to sketch vivid, complex, and ultimately heartbreaking female characters, and her ear for the speech patterns of young girls is positively uncanny. Nonetheless, I also think that the novel has some significant weaknesses that prevent it from becoming the masterpiece it's more overly enthusiastic partisans claim it to be. In some respects, its weaknesses are of a piece with its strengths. Earlier, I mentioned the author's obvious love of language. Many passages in this book are as beautifully written and moving as anything I've ever read(You will literally laugh AND cry). Unfortunately, there are many others that are simply OVERWRITTEN, and this ultimately dilutes some of the story's obvious power. The same can be said for the novel's structure, which not only weaves back and forth in time as already mentioned, but also tells multiple versions of the same events from multiple points of view. Some have compared this technique to peeling away the layers of an onion, but I think a more accurate analogy would be to a striptease. Like a striptease, the "climax" is really an anti-climax, since too much has been revealed at too great a length already. Any reasonably astute reader will have long since figured out what "really" happened long before everything is explained once and for all. Instead of drawing you deeper into the story, the red herrings that MacDonald continues to pile up just become annoying after awhile and by what I'm sure is meant to be a shattering climax, I for one could only say to myself, "What took you so long?" However, it must be said that there is ONE genuine surprise towards the end, that while it seems to come completely out of left field, makes a certain amount of sense once you think about it for more than a moment. Still, overall, Fall On Your Knees is not only worth reading, it makes you eagerly anticipate Ms. MacDonald's follow-up efforts (hopefully there will be many more). Even its failures are the result of too much ambition, rather than a lack of talent. It's almost always better to reach for the stars and fall just short, than not to reach at all.
Rating: Summary: sherylval@aol.com Review: ...My f2f book club picked this book so I gave it the ole college try - I read about 120 books per year and it took me two weeks just to get through the first 1/2 of this book and then I quickly skimmed the second half. Nothing really made any sense in this novel, and I didn't care one whit about any of the characters.
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