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A very unusual and convoluted story about the Piper family living on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. This book is not for the faint of heart as the themes are very adult and troubling. It is a sweeping family saga beginning in 1898 and ending in the mid 1950’s. This novel will take your breath away.

It took me 5 months to read this book but in the end I still didn’t want it to end. It was much darker than I thought and in took me on a roller coaster if emotions.

This book left me wanting to slash my wrists-- especially when I think about the time I spent reading it that I can never get back.

Many people loved this book. I am not one of them. The characters are shallow,self-involved and just plain crazy and while I realize that this is just like the people you meet in your everyday I life, it doesn't necessarily mean I want to read about them unless they are delivered in a well-written story that makes them shine a little. This is not that kind of story.

Reading this book (and I persisted because I am an open-minded reader) was like trudging through mud. And as open-minded as I am, I just could not take the rather graphic descriptions of molestation and incest. Ms. MacDonald, some times less is more.

About 100 pages before the end I was ready to quit. I'd had all I could take of the simpering, whining, craziness and frequent spinelessness of the Piper family. I only kept reading because I was actually interested in the story of what happened to Kathleen in New York.

A rich,complex, twisted story. The novel follows the saga of four sisters and moves from turn-of the-century Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to the European battlefields of WWI to New York in the Jazz Age. It is rife with intrigue, passion, betrayal, guilt, rage, heartbreak, and redemption. The detail of period and setting is amazing, the plot is sweeping and dramatic yet painfully intimate. It is not for the faint-of-heart, but if you love well-researched, unsentimental historical drama, this will draw you in and not let you go until the last page.

This is a novel set in a coal mining community in Canada and spans from before World War I, through the roaring 20s, and the great depression, as it follows the story of the Piper family.

It follows the characters of James Piper as he marries his child bride Materia, who comes from a conservative Catholic Lebonese family, and due to the scandal of their marriage, is disinherited. They start to have children, and then everything starts to get twisted. It appears that Mr Piper has way too much of a liking for young girls, and especially one of his own daughters.

The book covers many dark themes: statutory rape, rape, suicide, incest, depression, prostitution.

But, even besides all of the above, I actually found myself to be bored while reading this. I really wanted to start skim reading at one point, and then really contemplated giving up on it altogether. But I did push through, and it was an intriguing story, just not something that really gripped me.

This book reminded me of a grown-up VC Andrews, except you can read it on the subway without feeling like a pervy 12 year-old. Very Gothic at times and the crazy family drama had me reading non-stop, despite all the main characters being unlikeable assholes in one way or another. One thing that bugged me was that some of the writing didn't seem historically accurate. Did people in the 1920s really say "barf?" Maybe they did, I don't know. Regardless, I couldn't put this down and I blew through it in a couple days.

One of my all-time favourite books. I read this book for review way back in 1996 before it was officially released (I couldn't find the cover of the original hardcover edition to review, so I'm just using this one). Ann-Marie MacDonald has the most extraordinary way with language. My chest hurt, my heart ached, I was awed by the scenes she created and the reactions they invoked in me. And she still managed to make me laugh out loud throughout the book. MacDonald is one of my favourite writers, and I will never forget the impact this book had on me. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Okay - this is the second "Oprah's Book Club" book that I've read and, like DROWNING RUTH(Christina Schwartz), I disliked the story due to the disturbingly depressing plot. In DROWNING RUTH, the whole idea of a mentally-ill and controlling aunt (Amanda) ruining the life of her little niece (Ruth) after the girl's mother (Mathilda) mysteriously fell through the ice and drowned one cold winter eve was merely depressing; in FALL ON YOUR KNEES, however,the pervading theme of incest was more than distressing, it was just downright gross (and this is from an open-minded reader NOT easily shocked or bothered by sexual content!) Although I am always interested in reading books that deal with sensitive and even shocking topics (sometimes this makes a book more interesting!), I just don't find a need to experience incest in such poetic prose!

There's one thing I don't get - in the description on the back cover, the story is called "menacingly dark and hilariously funny" and it is also called "darkly humorous". Maybe I'm missing something or perhaps I'm not sophisticated enough, but I just don't see any humor at all in this distressing tale - and, like I said, I'm a very open-minded reader!

I discovered Ann-Marie MacDonald by accident, when I bought The Way the Crow Flies in a used bookstore during a biblioemergency. She hooked me instantly with her ability to get inside childhood, and her searingly real portraits of life in the 1960s, with the bonus of superb storytelling acumen and writing that is a pleasure to read. I read Fall on Your Knee second and had that wonderful enjoyment of a second shot of a writer who you liked so much the first time you didn't think you could have that pleasure again. Not only was Fall On Your Knees similarly satisfying, but it was uniquely satisfying for AMM's ability to create a nearly perfect gothic novel, along with all her other amazing traits. If I had to compare her to another writer, it would be Annie Proulx for her ability to give great reading plasure from the darkest of stories.

Un libro colpevolmente poco conosciuto (almeno in Italia) e che invece meriterebbe molta più risonanza.
E' una saga familiare cupa e morbosa, in cui l'aspra bellezza delle coste della Nuova Scozia di inizio novecento si armonizza perfettamente con le vicende torbide dei personaggi.
La passione è il motore della storia, declinata in tutte le sue forme: dal desiderio malato all' amore travolgente, passando per l'estasi religiosa ed una "cupio dissolvi" di matrice mistica. Lo si potrebbe definire un libro di tentazione e redenzione, in cui tutti i protagonisti assaggiano il frutto proibito e dovranno pagare il prezzo del peccato prima di poter ritrovare la pace interiore; una definizione del genere per quanto calzante è però limitante, perché non tiene conto della tridimensionalità dei personaggi o della scrittura intensa eppure delicata dell'autrice, entrambi elementi fondamentali al pari della trama. Anche la storia con la S maiuscola fa capolino tra le pagine ed affrontiamo tanto gli orrori della vita al fronte quanto la desolazione degli anni della Grande Depressione. Peccato solo che il finale perda mordente, è una sorta di epilogo per tirare le fila che risulta tuttavia un po' troppo didascalico e sbrigativo.
In conclusione un libro imponente, spietato ma mai davvero "cattivo", che non può lasciare indifferenti.

I cannot recommend this book. I actually threw it away after finishing it.

This tells you a few things. 1) The writing was so good and compelling and addicting it made it difficult for me to stop reading, despite my issues with it. 2) I didn't want anyone else to read it, so I didn't give it away or sell it. How's that for hypocritical and childish?

There were some sexual images, specifically incest, that I could not shake from my brain for several days. I kept replaying the scenes over and over and over again. It really bothered me.

I don't like artsy descriptions of horrible perversion.

One part of this book that I LOVED was in a marital-infidelity situation. The husband was systematically, purposefully seduced by a rather messed-up younger woman. He was a good man, a good father, and found himself in a very bad situation. Afterwards, he ran straight to his wife and told her. He was repentent, miserable. She instantly forgave him. She knew it would never happen again. And it didn't.

It was a very cool concept that their marriage, their family was bigger than a moment of weakness. What he did was horrible. But to her, it wasn't horrible enough to lose what they had. I really admired this idea. It's not how we look at marriage very much today and it was refreshing.

I enjoyed her writing style, obviously I was sucked in enough to read through it, but my heart was really dark and cloudy for a few days after reading it.

Won't touch it again.

La concezione moral-filosofica del pensiero greco era quella, detta in parole semplici, che le colpe dei padri ricadono sempre sui figli, per cui le ire delle divinità si concentrano sull’intera stirpe laddove il padre abbia commesso un peccato di superbia.
Ebbene, potrei dire che la medesima concezione viene espressa dalla scrittrice in questo romanzo che sembra non finire mai, ho letto i commenti di altri lettori che sono usciti estasiati dalla lettura, io invece ne sono uscita stremata. Le vicende si snodano nei primi decenni del Novecento a Cape Breton, una isoletta del Canada che è un puntino invisibile nelle carte geografiche, un luogo in cui si sono raccolti negli anni immigrati di varie razze, rifugiati dal vecchio continente e anche oltre, in cerca di lavoro, e prendono il via dal matrimonio del giovane James Piper , di origini scozzesi e irlandesi, con la tredicenne Materia Mahmoud, di famiglia libanese di religione cattolica. Da questa unione, nata sotto auspici infausti, nasceranno tre figlie, le figure centrali del romanzo, Kathleen, Mercedes e Frances, le cui vite saranno letteralmente infestate da amori morbosi, figli illegittimi, morti misteriose, fatti cruenti e tragici che si susseguono nella parte centrale del libro rimanendo però come in sospeso, in una atmosfera rarefatta, perché la scrittrice ne accenna appena, lasciando nella mente del lettore immagini macabre che colpiscono la fantasia nell’immediato, ma poi, ragionandoci, ci si domanda il perché, si cerca di comprendere gli eventi di questa famiglia “sfortunata”. E qua viene il bello, “il perché “ lo scopriamo solo nelle pagine finali del romanzo, le più belle, le pagine del diario di Kathleen, pagine intrise di amore, di dolcezza, di passione e di entusiasmo per una vita che prometteva per lei un gran futuro come cantante lirica. Se il romanzo fosse stato più breve, se gli intrecci fossero stati meno misteriosi, se la storia non fosse stata costellata da personaggi secondari di cui non si capisce bene il ruolo, se la mia lettura non fosse stata un continuo punto interrogativo, avrei probabilmente goduto per una scrittura lirica ed intensa, mi sarei affezionata a qualcuna delle protagoniste di questo mondo femminile pieno di contraddizioni, misterioso e imperfetto come l’albero genealogico della famiglia che Mercedes disegna all’inizio del romanzo e che ricompare alla fine nelle mani dei sopravvissuti, in cui le verità sono finalmente svelate. Non è andata così.