This five-star rating is the one I gave Ann-Marie MacDonald's powerhouse first novel the first time around, but I confess I was remembering and rating it at a great distance. I'm going to think on my second rating a bit more, but I can tell you that this was a very different read this time. I don't know that I liked it as much - although I recognize the mastery of its writing and characterization, and the amazing imagination behind the story. And I love how Cape Breton it was. But it was also gruelling and painful; it was long and sloggy at the 2/3rds to 4/5ths mark. And of course, having read it, the big reveal at the end was not the shocker it was on first read.

I think I'll land on a high 3, so let's say 4.

What to say about this devastating masterpiece? It's the 2nd time I've read it, and while it was hard to read the 1st time, I think re-reading is perhaps worse, because I knew the horrible thing that was coming (incest/rape). I don't really know how Ann-Marie MacDonald writes beautifully about such dark things, telling the intergenerational story of this fucked up family. The voice actor does an incredible job with the audiobook. If you can stomach it, this is a masterpiece, as I said. But fuck is it ever dark.

Full review / personal essay on my blog!

I was in a super geeky frame of mind when I read this book in early spring of 2012. I had been reading books about metaphors (see I told you... geeky). And as fate would have it I picked up this book suggested probably via the stream of books suggested on Amazon after you look at a book title there—right after my nerdy metaphor phase.

I literally started writing down metaphors I came across in the prose of this book... AMAZING. Beautiful. I'm not talking about similes or simple comparisons people. I'm talking about brilliant metaphors,that blow my mind!!

"... the glass panes gloated..."
"... the silvery sea flatters the moon."
"...cleanliness of steel born of soot."
"Shivering slightly at the unaccustomed breeze passing through the new spaces in her spine."
"She fell through a crack in time without spilling a drop. When she returned the tea was still piping hot."
"Teresa smiles at her. Frances collects the moment and puts in in a safe place, with 2 or 3 others." (other moments isn't that brilliant!?)
"The air (New York) is what the Gods live on."
"Sits down (in train station) serenaded by the (noisy) crowd."
(Scared) "It's autumn in her mouth and all her tongue can do is rustle."
(Upon waking) "Light in eyes: she buries her face in her pillow because the light is an eye operation... in the scalpel light."
"Kathleen is an abandoned mine." (after c-section/death)
knocking) "The door is thumping like a heart attack."
(happy)"He was Aladdin in an orchard dripping with diamonds."
"It was all boarded up, but he set to work, prying planks off windows, healing the blind."
"Her hair smells like the raw edge of spring."
(he was a) Cucumber in a woollen suit." (vs cool as a cucumber).
"A bookish girl, plain as a rainy Tuesday."
And possibly my very mostest favorite-est one of all:

"...enough merchandise to Mephistophelize a miner's wife."
I didn't know that word could be a verb!! :)

Oh the story? The Plot? Also fabulous. WORTH READING. Worth reading twice. Follows a young man in Nova Scotia and his life in a mining town. His young wife, their children and later the story of the children's lives... Epic. Amazing. Disgusting. Compelling. Sweet. Horrible. EVERYTHING a wonderful novel should be (and is).

Okay just go read it already.

Still a great book, but more fondly remembered as the first review I ever wrote for PW that made it to a book jacket. Without my byline, but still exciting, especially since it got fed to other outlets.

This Canadian writter impressed me deeply. I can only say, give it a chance, despite its lenght, it's absolutely worth it.

there are 17,636 ratings and 1,500 reviews of this book. if you want to see them all you have to scroll through eight hundred sixteen pages. i just noticed because i wanted to see if anyone else found this novel picaresque. no one did in the first three pages. if someone could search the other 813 and report to me, i'd be grateful.

so, i found this novel picaresque, or at least somewhat picaresque. it seems clearly picaresque to me when frances is in the narrative. i don't have a tremendous passion for the picaresque and the rocambolesque. i like my stories neat and real and possibly tidy. this is sprawling and untidy, even though almost all the strands are tied at the end. the only thing i really do not understand is why frances wanted to have a kid, and to have it with ginger. i truly have no clue.

it is also an extraordinarily quirky and strange novel, though i've seen reviewers say that it is a straight and ordinary read. this is my explanation: canadian literature is invariably quirky, but if you are canadian you won't notice it. that's how we know which reviewers are canadians.

it took me two weeks to read this. it's a long time. frances' adventures, while fascinating and absolutely crazy, didn't draw me in enough to pull long reading stretches and i think that overall the novel might have gained from being shorter and on fewer tracks.

but i'm quibbling. this story belongs to mercedes, frances, and lily. materia is sacrificed at the altar of the multi-generational format, which is a shame because her madness is so, so interesting. women stay alive by going mad. it happens in books over and over. it happens in life. we stay alive by going mad.

but the story belongs to the three sisters and this is an exceptional sister story. this is what it shows: that sisterhood (the familial kind) is tremendously powerful but also a force so strong that it must be reined in gently and firmly, and never allowed to get out of control. sisterhood can keep you sane and happy and make you feel deeply loved in the midst of terrible mayhem -- and kill you the next moment. i speak as someone who has three sisters. sisters who have survived three or four world wars together may not be able to remain good to each other. when their love turns poisonous, they can choose to stay and be poisoned, or leave. there is an extraordinary act of love toward the end. it concerns frances and lily. watch for it.

i don't know what it is with the violence of fathers. i wish i knew.

this book is listed here on goodreads in many lesbian lists. if you are reading it for the lesbian story you'll have to wait a good long time, because it takes place at the very end. if it had been stuck in the middle, fewer people might have remembered it and thus bothered to classify this book as a lesbian book. there is a queer undertone under all of it, though, and the lesbian story is extremely beautiful. still, i would not consider this a lesbian book.

i think i may be done with anne-marie macdonald. i have spent two weeks with her and her mind has blown mine, but i don't feel a great need to spend another 800 pages in her company (she has written only two novels). i may, however, read her plays.

lily piper may be one of the most fabulous literary creations of all time.

Sometimes the best books are the books that are actually more than one story. Fall On Your Knees is a difficult book to summarize, or review, in a way that could do it justice. It is one of those sweeping multi-generational pieces of historical fiction, but at the same time it’s really just a story about four sisters. Against the backdrop of Cape Breton Island and New York City from the turn of the 20th century all the way to the advent of World War II, Ann-Marie MacDonald shows us how the good and bad actions we take in life ripple outward to touch the lives of everyone around us.

MacDonald’s narrative is cyclical and self-referential. We don’t find out who the narrator is until the very end (though you can probably guess after a while). Though mostly linear, there are flashbacks throughout, and a detailled accounting of Kathleen’s time in New York is deferred to the penulimate section for dramatic effect. The story’s power comes from how the setting around the main characters changes, almost like a time-lapse video. When James and Materia marry, their corner of Cape Breton Island is unremarkable and undistinguished. We get to watch a town spring up, miners’ strike, the devastation of war, and the Great Depression. While the characters grow older, go to school, take or change vocations, the story that MacDonald tells never seems to change. It’s always about the tension between the good and evil parts of the soul, that desire to do right by each other and that temptation to be mischievous.

It’s the nature of a character-driven book such as this that it’s hard to identify protagonists and antagonists. Each character takes their turn at both; much as in real life, it’s largely a matter of perspective. Even in cases where the character seems more villainous than not, like James, or more saint than sinner, like Lily, their actions bely that simplified morality.

When James marries Materia over her parents’ disapproval, it seems for about two and a half pages that Fall On Your Knees will be a love story. Rugged Canadian of Irish descent makes good with daughter of Lebanese immigrants, settles down, and becomes a respected piano tuner. MacDonald lets us cling to this vision, as I said, for a few pages, spinning out the fantasy that James and Materia might be happy together. Having manipulated us by presenting it as a love-match between a precocious young woman and a headstrong young man, she pivots, pulls off the blinders, and shows us the other perspective:

But deep down he winced at the thought of showing Materia to anyone. He was grateful they lived in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her any more, he did. It was just that, recently, it had struck him taht other people might think there was something strange. They might think he’d married a child.

So, love story, denied, or rather, aborted. Passion fizzles out to be replaced only by a kind of bewildered regret, which soon kindles resentment. James has such ambition: he orders a crate of books—a crate!—from England with the intention of becoming an educated, well-read, learned man. He wants to move in higher circles than he was born into. And he is frustrated when it becomes clear that Materia will be more hindrance than help in this regard. It’s not her fault; she was raised in a sheltered way, and she is so very young. Yet MacDonald gives her ambition as well: she discovers her love for performing, for playing the piano for vaudeville acts. What might Materia have become if James had believed in and supported her instead of shunned her?

It’s interesting to note what doesn’t happen in Materia and James’ marriage. As far as we know, James never cheats on her (with the one exception, as we learn at the end, but that is … different). He does not beat her regularly—there are moments when he hits her, yes, and MacDonald rightly portrays these as the inexcusable acts they are. He doesn’t leave her (unless you count going to war). I mention these things, because in spite of the evident dissatisfaction on both sides, these two try to muddle through. On Materia’s part, it’s likely that she sees little other choice, especially after Mercedes and Frances are born. On James’ part, it’s that he wants to be seen as a good man. And good men don’t abandon their wives and families, right? I can’t help but feel like some of this subtext is grounded inexorably in the period: in a more contemporary setting, Fall On Your Knees would involve messy affairs, fast cars, divorce, and in the inevitable movie adaptation, a car chase and a running-through-the-airport scene.

Reading this book a second time, of course, means that I have the benefit of what little I remembered about it. I don’t know if I completely comprehended the foreshadowing of James’ demon when I first read this book; this time around, of course, it feels rather heavy-handed. But it seems like that is the point:

The next day, James outsmarts the demon for the second time. He enlists.…

… Materia arrives at Mount Carmel and hurries over to Mary’s grotto. There she prostrates herself as best she can, what with her unborn cargo, and gives thanks to Our Lady for sending The War.

MacDonald keeps the specifics of what happens vague until the end of the book, but she foreshadows early on that James cannot outsmart his demon forever. With this, she declares, “This is a tragedy.” For a book so steeped in Catholic symbolism, there is a strong whiff of Calvinist determinism to this: James is destined to survive the war; Kathleen is destined to seek her fortune in New York; all are destined for tragedy.

MacDonald continues in this tenor with the trio of Mercedes, Frances, and Lily. With the first two, Materia’s influence is more pronounced: Mercedes grows up staunchly Catholic, and she and Frances share with their mother a muddled, fairy-talesque use of Arabic words to communicate and commiserate. These two fill the void of motherhood for Lily, who never gets to know either Materia or Kathleen.

It’s particularly interesting how Mercedes’ life resembles that of her parents. Like James, she ends up making many sacrifices for her family. She takes on jobs she doesn’t necessarily want, puts off her own ambitions, studies by correspondence rather than going to university in person. Mercedes tries to dress these sacrifices in humility, like a good Catholic, and I appreciate the way MacDonald draws out the irony and pride that taints her actions:

Tears fill Mercedes’ eyes. It is not fair that Frances should bask in Daddy’s affection and the approval of sundry shopkeepers for something that ought to have her hiding her face in shame. It is not fair that Sister Saint Eustace managed to make Mercedes feel like the bad one—when everyone knows that she’s the good one. It is not fair that Frances will have a baby, while Mercedes was denied a husband. None of it is fair, but that is not why Mercedes is weeping freely against her pillow…. Everyone seems to think that motherhood is the best thing that could possibly happen to [Frances]. Everyone but Mercedes. For she knows that once Frances has a child, Frances will no longer need a mother.

Mercedes in her hubris is a recognizable stereotype of someone we all know. Her genuine desire to do good through her sacrifices is mixed with the yearning for recognition she feels her martyrdom must bring. And when it doesn’t—or when someone spurns it deliberately, as Lily does by rejecting the Lourdes plan—she can only recover by reframing what happens in light of faith and her own ego. Well, if Lily doesn’t want her leg healed, doesn’t want to be whole, she must be possessed! In this way Mercedes justifies her past sacrifice and reassures herself that neither she nor her interpretation of her faith could be wrong; the world simply hasn’t lived up to its promise.

In both Mercedes and Frances, even more so than in their father, we see how people grow up and change in the unlikeliest of ways. Mercedes is so full of dreams of marrying and settling down with a family, even if it is with the Jewish boy next door. And Frances—wild Frances, showgirl Frances, sex worker Frances … would she ever have thought she would be the mothering type? Though Frances probably undergoes the most dramatic of changes, it is just another manifestation of MacDonald’s theme that our lives—while seemingly driven by destiny—are unpredictable, malleable, and full of surprises.

Lily is interesting in that, for the majority of her time in the story, she is not really a protagonist or antagonist at all, but rather an object on which other characters enact their designs. Mercedes mothers Lily, raises Lily, pities Lily, loves Lily, and harbours the secret hope that Lily might be a saint. Lily being a saint is far more preferable to Mercedes being a saint, of course, because being a saint is a sucky job. You have to suffer—physically, in Lily’s case—and be ever so holy. Being the sister of a saint, the person who first recognized their sainthood, is a much better gig.

Lily is an excuse for Frances to embrace her wilder side. Don’t forget that, originally, the siblings went Kathleen, Mercedes, and then Frances in order of age. Frances was the youngest child, the baby. It’s only after the epoch that Mercedes suddenly becomes the eldest and Frances the middle child. So it’s interesting to see them take up the stereotypical mantles of those titles: Mercedes becomes the responsible one, and Frances can be the wild one, because James can pin his hopes and dreams on Lily once more.

I really can’t do justice to this book in a review of any length. I haven’t even scratched the surface of the themes MacDonald weaves throughout it. I could go on to talk about racism, about the effects of war at home, about the march of history, family, and religion. As for the characters, who indisputably make the book what it is, I have only managed to give the briefest overview of what makes them so complex and well-realized.

So let’s finish off by talking about Lily at the end of the book, by which I really mean, of course, talking about Kathleen in New York.

I remembered James’ demon, but I did not remember the twist that MacDonald introduces during Kathleen’s time in New York. We learn early on that James goes to retrieve her because she has fallen in love, ostensibly with a black man. MacDonald carefully shapes our expectations in such a way that when the details come to light, it’s clever. She plays both on our heteronormative expectations of society in general as well as our expectations of that time period. This is just another facet in the way that MacDonald gently probes the layers of people’s personalities. Like so many other minor characters in this book, Rose takes on a life of her own without stealing the stage. Fall On Your Knees is one of those special novels that manage to contain more of a universe than most: a true microcosm rather than the two-dimensional set that falls apart if you view it from another angle.

Some books capitalize on a single tragedy, one moment of absolute disaster that has consequences for the rest of the characters’ lives. The plot and conflict then comes from watching them pick up the pieces, if they can, and making their peace where they cannot. Other books, though, capture how life is more properly a series of tragedies, some small, some big. Our lives routinely shatter and reassemble, seemingly on the universe’s whim or of their own accord; we don’t pick up the pieces so much as try to reinterpret the map after a geological upheaval. Fall On Your Knees is like this. It’s not just that bad things happen: lots of bad things happen, but good things happen too, and worse still, sometimes it’s hard to tell the two apart. Sometimes when we think we’re doing good we are actually doing the most harm—and vice versa. In these respects, this book reminds me a lot of that other inexpressibly wonderful story, n  A Fine Balancen. However, Fall On Your Knees feels a little more optimistic in its prognosis for its characters. There is no such thing as “moving on” or “moving past” a tragedy, because in living through it, it changes you. It is just as much a part of you as every good thing that happens. So as MacDonald closes out the book by showing us the time-lapse photographs of the rest of the Pipers’ lives, we get to see the sum over all their histories.

And then Anthony finds Lily, and the story starts over again.

This is a book that sprawls. It is beautifully written, MacDonald’s style being without parallel here. I first read her play Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) in first-year English, and that’s what led me to Fall On Your Knees. Sometime after that I think I also read The Way the Crow Flies, but it never left as much of a lasting impression on me as this book. For nearly eight years I’ve cited this as one of my favourite novels. But the truth is, I barely remembered the details. I remembered only the exhilaration I felt reading it, the sense that this is so good it’s painful.

Yet I put off re-reading it for the longest time. I was scared that if I did, I wouldn’t like it as much. I would discover that my memory is more false than normal, that it just isn’t as good as I thought it was. I didn’t want that to happen.

This is my 1000th review on Goodreads, though. I could lie and say I don’t care, but breaking into four digits does feel pretty special. I put a lot of time and effort into these reviews, so to say that I’ve written so many is something worth celebrating. To do that, I wanted to review a very special book—and what better than the book I didn’t want to re-read?

I was a fool; I should have had more faith. Fall On Your Knees is every bit as good as it was the first time I read it—maybe more. It cannot offer answers or reassurance, but instead only the certainty that life is complex and difficult. This is a book that sprawls, not just because it covers multiple generations and a dynamic network of characters, but because their stories have no clear starting or stopping points. Unlike a classical tragedy, which ends in the clarity of the protagonist’s death, these characters have to go on living.

This is the truth of Fall On Your Knees and the inadequacy of the novel form that it exposes: stories don’t end after the tragedy is dealt with. As much as we might like, we cannot boil down our judgement of a person to “did they do good?” or “were they a good person?” Life is a series of events, good or bad or a mixture as determined by how we react—but every event shatters us, changes us. Life is the act of continuously rebuilding ourselves. The story does not stop, never stops, as long as we are there to shatter and rebuild, over and over.

And so I’m not going to stop.

Here’s to the next thousand.

n  n

Refinement is not a prerequisite to good literature. MacDonald was not formulating a thesis with her novel, she was telling a story. But like any true writer, MacDonald knows that no story is singular. And so, although she starts with one, she ends up having to tell them all. In doing so, she makes sense of the pain and sorrow. They become constitutive of present and future beauties. And this is not overly ambitious because she is telling several stories at once. It is ambitious because it is difficult to let truth pour out of you. Even and maybe especially as a writer -- whose readers apparently expect you to play by the rules. Well, I love unruly, unrefined, uncontainable literature. Let stories split and entwine always.

He reaches out to touch the silk, which is impossible to feel if there is a lifetime of work on your hands. He touches it but does not feel it -- just as he saw what he could not have seen. I don't care what you were, come back to me Please Please Please Ohhh. It's his last thrill and his last sting of love, as fresh and painful as youth transplanted over time and an ocean. There is nothing left for him now except to die, but that will take a while because he is a creature of habit, and he has got into the habit of being alive.

I was a ghost until I touched you. Never swallowed mortal food until I tasted you, never understood the spoken word until I found your tongue. I’ve been a sleep-walker, sad somnambula, hands outstretched to strike the solid thing that could awaken me to life at last. I have only ever stood here under this lamp, against your body, I’ve missed you all my life.

Where do I even start with this one? This is heavy, heavy stuff, full to the brim with family secrets. And some of these are some pretty hardcore secrets. When asked by a co-worker what I was reading lately, I barely knew what to say - "Well, this book about a family, and their gross father, and there's a lot of incest..." But while there is definitely a very strong undercurrent of incesty feelings and behavior running through the entire novel, there is much more to it.

It's hard to give a high level summary of the plot without diving into all of the intricacies. Basically, it's a family saga about 4 sisters and their father living in Cape Breton that spans maybe 30-40 years (I'm too lazy to officially work out the timeline in my head!) There are several main events that you learn about slowly, by jumping back and forth in time until all of the mysteries are finally revealed. This storytelling device works well here - it never feels disjointed, and makes it more exciting (as well as, admittedly, icky).

None of the (main) characters are particularly likeable. They all have some redeeming qualities - Frances is bright and vivacious and fun before her rebellious behavior just becomes over the top, Mercedes really is just trying to take care of her family, even as she comes off as overly pious and condescending, and Lily is altogether innocent, but she does certain things that make you want to strangle her. Even Materia, who is for the most part a victim forced into a strange and vaguely sadistic marriage at the age of 12, didn't elicit full sympathy from me. Often, not connecting with any of the characters on a personal level ruins a book for me, but in this case I was completely fascinated. Having had a very normal childhood with very normal parents and a sister, reading about a family like this was compelling and satisfyingly twisted.

To me, this book was dark and sad, but there was a beautiful quality to it too. It wasn't necessarily the best time for me to read it, as the weather is finally becoming sunny and gorgeous - I feel this type of sordid book is more suited for the dark depths of winter. The prose is hazy and wistful and sad, and it's just such a good story. I'm sorry that it took me so long to become aware of this book and to pick it up, and at 584 pages it was an effort, but it was well, well worth it.

This book is one of those books that you either love it or hate it. I loved it. In fact its one of my favorite books of all time. Its dark and deep but beautiful. The book is actually based in the town I grew up in so it was interesting to read about the town I grew up in only during the setting of the book. It was wonderful to read about the church I grew up in, my grandmothers church and later, the church I married my husband in. The book being set in Cape Breton was what grabbed my attention but the story dragged me in and kept a death grip on me til I finished it. The first time I read it, I actually stayed up all night to finish it.

This book is not for the light at heart. If you don't take any enjoyment from stories that talk about incest or other related but depressing topics, then this book is not for you. If you are looking for a happily ever after, go find something else. This isn't a fluffy and happy novel.

This is a book that I will always turn to when I want to reread a favorite.

I have never read a book quite like this one. Beautiful writing, unique and gorgeous metaphors, a wild and primitive yet gorgeous Nova Scotia location, yet with the darkest themes known to mankind. This is not a light read about a family. This is about the most dysfunctional family ever, with secrets, misunderstandings, death, disease, bootlegging, racism, rape, child abuse, prostitution, violence, all tangled up with religion, mostly Catholicism. It also includes a music theme throughout-hymns, blues, Christmas songs, opera, singing, pianos, etc. This is about a mining community that includes people from all over the globe. It is about taking care of family, no matter the morally skewed methods.

I honestly am not sure whether or not I liked this book-I don’t even know if liking it is possible. At first, I would compare it to an auto accident-you simply cannot look away. Then it becomes an unfolding, right up till the last page. In the end, I would say that it is worth the read, as long as you can accept the blunt subject matter, because the characters are so well-drawn.

OMG, I hated this book. It was painful to read. I spent a good 3 hours trying to read this book and ended up skimming the rest of it so I could be done with it.
MacDonald covers just about every topic in her book: racial tension, isolation, domestic abuse, and forbidden love, which leads to incest, death, and even murder, but does it in a very complicated way that will turn many readers away.
I consider myself a strong reader-one who has fantastic reading comprehension but this book tests even the strongest of readers. I felt that I had to read for days in order to get the jest of what she wrote about 30-50 pages back. It was ridiculous.
I consider myself pretty open to reading just about anything but this one just was too much....
I think I'll stick to my VC Andrews for my abuse and incest stories. She does them so much better than MacDonald did...and that's not saying much is it?
I'll give it 1 star but to be honest I wish Zero stars was an option...maybe even negative ones. I will not be reading anymore of her books.

updated shelves June 2011: zero stars due to skimming and not fully reading