Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't get through it.
Review: I really couldn't finish this one. She has a brilliant writing style, but lacks the ability to write an engaging plot.
Rating: 
Summary: depressing, even boring
Review: I'm so sorry I wasted my time with this book. The story has not one character you can really like, it is totally humourless and dark family-saga. Incest, foreign cultures, mysterious sexual forces, it's all there, but why? What a pity she can write!
Rating: 
Summary: a family destroyed
Review: This is a tragic tale, fleshed out in rather epic proportions. Put simply, it is the story of how one damaged man destroys the lives of five girls: his wife and his daughters. This book is a testament to how much damage one person can set into motion in less than a lifetime. James Pipers' actions create situations in which his family also makes bad choices, everyone in the hopes of doing some good. No matter what anyone says, Frances is the best of the sisters. Standing directly in the line of fire, she bears the brunt of James' misdeeds - being slowly destroyed - while the rest of them look the other way.
Rating:
Summary: Good- as far as though family sagas go
Review: These sweeping family sagas usually leave me dry- they go in and out of being capitivating. When they are interesting, they are very interesting, but when they are bad they are horrid! This one makes up for it by alot of interesting prose. It is very rich in metaphor. I think she is a strong writer, and I will definately check out her other work. She loses a star here for sentimentality, and although I primarily read women authors, there was a bit to much estrogen here.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant and Unusual
Review: Read this book. You are in the hands of a wonderfully adept and lyrical writer with a voice worth listening to. This family saga is sometimes dark and troubling but it's always fascinating, like its Canadian Maritime setting. How exciting to discover a writer as talented and memorable as this one!
Rating:
Summary: Publicly Intimate
Review: Fall on Your Knees is an account of one family's lineage, history, intuition and patterns. With action located mainly in Cape Breton, this work describes the "dirty laundry" so often hidden from public view -- the timeless goings of Every Eamily struggling to make meaning of life's Everydayness. Ann-Marie MacDonald pierces images and hangs them up for all to claim, stimulating the body's deepest network of responses, now in the skeletal system, now in the fluids, and oh-so-often in the organs. I have rarely read fiction so beautifully researched, and never so beautifully written. Vivid details describe my grandparents, my siblings, myself. In spite of the characters factual differences, I found myself absorbed in the potential of the husband blindly trying to make his own way without regard to the context in which he was acting, cowed in the shame of the wife who broke with her culture's expectations, cocky in view of the first-born daughter as she finds herself outside her father's design, identifying with the middle child as she carries (out) the burdens of keeping the family moving onward toward a Christian goodness, stunned at the shenanigans of the sassy younger sister, and touched by the magic of the baby girl. I highly recomend this book even for those who don't consider themselves readers and can't imagine a 560+page book.
Rating:
Summary: A family point of view
Review: I have read the Book Fall on your Knees three times in as many years. Each time has been an awakening for me. Parts I never knew or were unable to grasp the first and second time through. If you know the author, however, it is that much more of a treat to read. You see, she is my cousin. I have talked with her on several different occasions when she comes to town for a visit. I have attended every public reading she has given on her book. For people to say the characters are unbelievable is rediculous. Did you think everything and everybody on earth was all american apple pie back in those days? This was real. As real as anyone's history of their family. Yet it's still fiction because the Piper family never existed together. they were made up of other people who did exist. As someone once said, to be a good writer, one should write about what they know. That is what research is all about I guess. Trying reading the story more than once, maybe you'll find what you were missing the first time.
Rating: 
Summary: Unsettling and dark
Review: This is one of the books I have to read in broad daylight - somehow it's unsettling and spooky, especially Frances disturbed me. It wasn't a very gripping read to me, but interesting enough to keep on reading, although I feel the middle part could have been shortened a bit. I got a bit tiresome of the dark Frances and the angelic Lily and the Martha-like Mercedes - stereotypes. In the end it got better: Kathleen's diary is terrific and the style is much more appealing and clear. On the whole, the book reads like watching a film.
Rating:
Summary: My Favourite Book!
Review: I will read this book a hundred times before I die. It is the most beautiful, satisfying, magical book I have ever read. Don't be intimidated by its length -- you won't want it to end!
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking!
Review: I miss only a hundred pages but I really don't want to finish it. I was awake all nights. Wonderful plot, complex and unforgettable charachters, skillful writing. Mac Donald has find her definitive job. I bet it will a movie soon. Thank Max!
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