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Summary: Our first book club selection
Review: We just read Fall on your Knees for our book club here in Ottawa, Canada. I would highly recommend this novel. It can be challenging but it is also very rewarding. The characters lives are shaped with struggle, violence, deception, and yet they survive. An excellent novel
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Summary: 600 pages flew by!
Review: This beautiful and expansive novel contains moments of pure poetry! I gave it 4 stars and not 5 because at times I felt the author was trying to cover too many topics. Instead of covering incest, interracial relationships, and sexual orientation together, the author could have focused on a single issue and developed it more. Yet the novel works because the characters struggling with these issues are very human and spirited. They captivated me as much as the author's writing style, and I read 600 pages in a few hours. Highly recommended.
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Summary: You will read it to the finish...
Review: because you are never sure EXACTLY how it will come out, although you know that there will be a resolution. I felt the author ran out of steam with the ending, but I still liked the book for its characters and the complexity of the thought process that obviously went into it. For me, the best books contain characters who stay "alive" in your mind after you put the book down, whether you like them or not. The literal truth is frequently less important than the truth that emotion generates, and this book generates emotional heat. The characters are still in the back of my head a week after finishing the book.
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Summary: The words that tell the story will make love to your heart!
Review: What a way to finish my summer reading! This is one of the best novels I have read in the last ten years. Not only was the story compelling, but the beautiful language that sings the story is breathtaking. Very rarely do I find myself reading parts of a novel over and over again wanting to make the words part of my heart forever. Fall on your Knees made me do that so many times, especially when the relationship of Kathleen and Rose suddenly bloomed in the middle of the narrative. That last part of the book is truly the pearl, the treasure that makes reading a journey of the soul. I am not the same person after being part of the Piper family. The love and the sorrow that were part of their lives has made me reflect upon the ways that love and sorrow have been part of mine. I thought Mary McGarry Morris' Songs in Ordinary Time was an amazing family story, but the characters and their trials seem so small compared to the members of the Piper family and those they loved.
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Summary: Anne Marie MacDonald captures my soul with her gripping tale
Review: Fall on Your Knees by Ms. MacDonald is the most passionate story i have ever wanted to read. I would read it over and over if that made sense to do. It's the best book i have ever read and I want to share it with everyone. It's beautiful, it's honest, it's sexy, it's sad. It's so important that MacDonald has done this, portrayed this loving story with such intense emotions riviting through each page. Please read this book for soul cleansing purposes, if not for anything else. Thank you Ann Marie Macdonald for your story.
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Summary: Beautifully written and Intensely moving
Review: I picked up this book by chance, knowing nothing about it. It read like poetry. MacDonald's prose is beautiful, and the way that the story unfolds gradually, dipping back and forth in time, is ingenious without drawing attention to itself. But finally, what makes this book one of the best I have read in several years is a series of magnficent character portrayals, where Kathleen, Lily, Mercedes, Rose and most especially Frances came to life and still live on in my head after I had finished reading.
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Summary: Family Saga Has Momentum
Review: This book is kind of a Poe meets Steele (though a deeper than Steele!). The suspenseful storytelling and very interesting character development kept me turning pages. Family bonds and binds are well developed, complex and endearing. Can't help but feel that the family saga is a bit formulaic.
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Summary: A once-in-a-lifetime experience
Review: There exists a select number of books with the ability of instantly captivating the reader and immersing him or her in a universe too credible to be false. Books which are addictive and capable of creating, like the old Greek dramas, a sort of catharsis-feeling by the end. "Fall on Your Knees" is such a book. A book which will stay with you for the rest of your life. A buy there's no chance you'll regret. The language floats almost languidly, caressing the reader and making him/her a passive part in a story of dimensions.This, a story of a rather different Nova Scotian family stretching from the beginning of this century till the 1950s, is possibly one of the, if not to say THE, best book I've ever read. It really got to me. The surprising twists and turns, the wonderful use of symbols, and the way everything was inter-connected, almost made me lose my breath. The book's language didn't seem construed, but alive, breathing and natural. It's a book filled with delicious trepidation. It's a work of art. It's a masterpiece. In short, a once-in-a-lifetime experience...
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Summary: Featherweight Fluff
Review: A good friend recommended Fall On Your Knees after her son, who lives in Canada, sent her a copy. Since we share the same taste (until now) I ran out to buy the book, unable to wait until she was finished. From the beginning chapters I was disappointed and continuing to wade through, expected it to pick up and improve but it was not to be. Not only were the characters overly ecentric and unbelievably dysfunctional but did anyone catch the use of the word guesstimate? The word is a hybrid of the 90's as in 1990's and not the 1890's. By far, the most implausible part of the story was the relationship between Katheleen and Rose - puhleeze! Though I managed to finish the book, it was out of morbid curiosity as to how the author would end the suffering of the family and myself, the reader.
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Summary: Worth a money-back guarantee!
Review: I purchased this book last Christmas while visiting a friend in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He offered me a money-back (and then some!) guarantee: "Buy this book," he said, "and if by page 75 you don't believe it's the best book you've ever read, call me and I'll send you $50 (Canadian!) to cover your expenses." I bought it and tucked it away at the bottom of my reading stack. It finally found its way to the top two weeks ago, and I can say with certainty my friend will be keeping his $50. As almost all of the other reviews indicate, this is a fascinating, absorbing, powerful novel. MacDonald's characters are alive, and she draws the reader into the plot line with incredible subtlety and richly described settings. She has created and offered easy access to worlds both real and imagined. If you appreciate good writing and a great story, buy this book and read it. You won't want your money back!
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