Rating: 
Summary: Don't miss this book!
Review: This book is one of the best books I have read in a long time, and I read a lot. The characters became so believable, that I feel they are still with me! It got better with every chapter, all the way to the last page. I hated it to end, I want to read it again.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad book
Review: I have read most of Oprahs books and many other books, and out of all of them I found this to be the worst book I have ever read. It starts when an 18 year old boy marries a 12 year old girl, they have a kid with in a year, the mother doesn't love the baby, and the father decides he does not love the mother. Later they have a couple more kids, shortly after that, the mother dies. The daughters are the somewhat the main focus of the story, yet there is no real plot. There is no climax, ending, or resolution what so ever. The book is a waste to read since it's so long. The book did have a couple of moments, but for 500 pages I feel it's not enough.
Rating:
Summary: A literary quagmire
Review: The most amazing two things about this book are:
a) to make the Oprah Book Club
b) and to find readers to give it five stars
Personally, I find the author without literary talent but have to give her one star for effort. Her story line is scatterbrained, her characters are boring, leading a misguided daily existence on 420 pages written in an incomprehensible style. On page 421 the author begins to explain what happened the previous pages, because I swear most readers don't have a clue so far. The mother seems to have murdered her daughter with a kitchen knife caesareanstyle, the six year old wants to babtize the babytwins drowning them in a brook or water nearby. And good dear daddy is boring until you find out his nasty dark secret. The quagmire is so deep, that even Fatima, or any religious aspiration cannot penetrate all this negativity, hopelessness, immorality, and dysfunction. The authors attempt to shine a ray of divinity into her twisted tale fails...
Rating:
Summary: Hitler's Last Courier
Review: In brief, this work by ex-Hitler Youth Armin Lehmann is the most stirring work I can clearly recollect having read, and well worth its five stars. My only criticism, as author of about ten books of my own (albeit that none has yet been published in whole - excerpts only), is that very occasionally there is room for closer editing, but never to the extent that meaning is at present marred.
Lehmann begins with an incident from his youth which gives us some immediate inkling of the hardness - likely worse than hardship - of a draconian right-wing upbringing at the hands of his would-be-Nazi father. While that side of young Armin's life would probably never improve, to it was added brainwashing and, of course, many sorts of dangers as war swept Europe - but also the fascination, for a young and impressionable lad, of almost literally rubbing shoulders with the ruling party's top-ranking personalities after he'd joined the small courier corps carrying messages about in the vicinity of what we might call Hitler's "action central" in Berlin.
Almost miraculously he survived everything, including at the dramatic climax when, on probably Berlin's last day as the Nazis' Capital, Lehmann was hurrying to deliver Hitler's final message as Russian tanks rumbled up the street toward him, firing their guns and first injuring him too badly to more than drag himself into the supposed shelter of a masonry wall that still stood erect - only to have the wall collapse and bury him alive!
There had, of course, been many other remarkable occurrences, and Lehmann ended the war with several decorations including one for having destroyed another enemy tank in the very precincts of the Fuhrerbunker, shortly before the end. After hospitalization and denazification, Lehmann was to become an American citizen, now living peacefully with his wife in Waldport, Oregon, where he has become known for his efforts to "still the dogs of war".
There is much, much more to tell than this, and I have in fact told a little of it in a review of less limited format, but none can match the mastery of the original book - composed, by the way, by a most able author for whom, remarkably, English is only a second language.
...
Rating: 
Summary: Every action is meant to shock and its good old quickly!
Review: Talk about a disconnected mess where everything is meant to shock, so much so that by the end you are numb to anything and everything that happens. I mean who cares really? I stopped caring about these selfish dullards after 50 pages, who knows why I kept reading. I surely don't.
Rating:
Summary: Story of Epic Proportions
Review: Fall on your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald is the epic story of a family that appears to be doomed from its inception. It starts with a young James Piper marrying a very young Materia Mahmoud, against her father's wishes. (She had been betrothed to another and therefore marrying someone else was an affront to the family and their traditions). With her father disowning her, it is the start of a life of suffering and loneliness for Materia, and the start of nothing but terrible suffering for James and their children. Materia gives birth to four daugthers. Kathleen, the eldest, becomes the love of James' life, in more ways than one. Mercedes is the 2nd daughter, the first child that Materia finds any love for. Frances is followed 11 months later, destined to become a trouble maker and brings nothing but anger from James. Lily is the 4th child that lives for only a few days, but is replaced years later by another Lily, presumed by most to be Materia's fifth child. In between the births, Materia is constantly fighting depression and unhappiness, married to a man she had thought she once loved but now can no longer tolerate. When James leaves the country to join the war efforts abroad (and to escape a forbidden love) Materia experiences happiness for at least a short while. The three daughters enjoy the relationship of sisterhood, but the three of them are different as night and day. Things change for the worse when one of them suddenly passes on, and while the story was dark to begin with, things turn for the worse. FALL ON YOUR KNEES is filled with forbidden love and taboos. It's not your run of the mill soap opera, but a tragic epic spanning several generations. This book may turn off a few readers with it's dark themes and taboo topics, but I think the patient reader should find fulfillment by the end of the book. I found this book well written and very clever in the handling of the story line. It left me in suspense up til the very ending.
Rating:
Summary: Not recommended
Review: Fall on Your Knees is one of the coldest, most depressing books I have ever read. The book gave me that uncomfortable, eerie feeling from front to back. I honestly wish I had followed my initial instincts and stopped near the beginning, but instead I couldn't help thinking, "Oh, maybe things will get better." Things only got worse. The characters were all very sick and extreme, which gave them an inhuman quality. I completely loathed some of the main characters, especially as the story progressed. While the writing style was unique, it was too distant. After 500 pages of present tense narration, I felt more like a voyeur than a reader. There is nothing enjoyable about mentally ill characters and the outcomes of their disgusting sexual cravings. Please, save your time, money, and sanity by choosing a different book.
Rating:
Summary: Not a pleasure read
Review: This is only the second Oprah book I have read and will, most certainly, be the last. I read for pleasure, to escape into different worlds and different lives and experiences, but not this different. There is enough ugliness in our everyday lives without crawling into bed to read about it at night. The incest element, a thread that ran throughout the whole book, was too much for me. I liked the style of traveling back and forth between the time frames, but everything was always so tragic - suicides, dead babies, incest, despair. It was too heavy for me - not at all the last thoughts I want going through my head at night. I, too, continued reading it, hoping there would be some redemption for this family. I wish I had thrown the book away after the first chapter.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't live up to the hype
Review: The first time I read this book I thought it was great, then when I re-read it I realized that just too many wierd things happened to the Piper family. If you want to read it, read it for it's depictions of New Waterford and Sydney, N.S., which are dead on.
Rating:
Summary: REVITING!!!
Review: I could not put this book down! I found myself throwing this book, pounding my fists, and gasping as I read about the tumultuous and tragic relationship between James Piper and his daughters, Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances, and Lily.Through alot of symbolism, Ms. MacDonald does an amazing job taking the reader through the dysfunctional Piper family's journey of racism, religious fanaticism, murder, incest, war, post-partum depression, cross dressing, lesbianism,music, and more, (So much more). This story will grip you with its many twists and surprises. After completing this book, I found myself sitting still, shaking my head at disbelief at what I had just read!
This is an amazing book, that with the right actors, would make a darn good movie!
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