Episch familiedrama gesitueerd in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, rond 1900...pijnlijk, rauw...daardoor ook mooi...
De jonge pianostemmer James wordt verliefd op de dertienjarige Materia...Haar ouders staan niet achter haar keuze en ze worden verbannen. Ze leven bewust geisoleerd...door het leeftijdsverschil en het verschil in karakter, voelt James weerzin voor Materia. Hij richt al zijn hoop en liefde op hun eerstgeboren dochter Kathleen. Zij heeft 'de stem', hij onderwijst haar en haar volledige onderricht is gericht op haar ontwikkeling en haar carrière. Dit vormt ook haar karakter. Alle gebeurtenissen die volgen vloeien hier uit voort...de gebeurtenissen (ik verklap niets...) zijn heftig, rauw...mooi...
Een briljant debuut...een aanrader!!

Hutný příběh jedné rodiny a jedné doby. Málokdy se mi stane, že by mě kniha ani trochu nenudila. Rozhodně to zapadlo do mého aktuálního čtecího menu, kdy už si fakt hodně vybírám. Chtěla jsem dát 4 hvězdy, ale konec to hezky spojil a navíc je to debut! Prostě pět hvězd.

This contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.

Fall On Your Knees is massive. Ann-Marie MacDonald successfully weaves a multi-generational story of the Piper family on Cape Breton Island wrapped in secrets, love & loss, family values/ the value of family, sins, compassion and redemption. As it should, the story unfolds in waves. There are moments of playfulness and humor, and others where the tide of pain comes down so strong, slightly unexpected, and, for a second, the feeling of drowning, only to return to the surface, rejoicing, for calmer approaching moments.

Now, I started by saying that this story is massive. It really is, and I'm not trying to say that I'm intimidated by 508 pages, because I'm not. I'm still digesting it, and I don't think I'll ever fully consume the entire thing.

AHHH the importance of titles and the 1st line of every novel.
FALL ON YOUR KNEES- (did anyone else read w/ Celine Dion's voice in the back of their head? No one?)
"They're all dead now."
The story, or prologue, opens with highlighting objects and photos that seem to evoke voices of distant memories. We are then launched into James Piper's story and his arrival at Cape Breton. Well, Sydney 1st. James is a diligent young man, 15 or so, and imagines making a new life of his own. He envisions a family of his own "filled with music and the silence of good books." He becomes a piano tuner, which grants him the introduction of Materia. It's love at first sight for him, and they quickly elope and plan to move away to NYC, unbeknownst to her parents. She's 12, going on 13 and already promised to someone else. So you can only imagine the rage and shame Mahmoud, Materia's father felt, and understand why (despite custom) he banished them (with a home of their own). And like every other angry person, Mahmoud curses them, the home, and Materia's womb. *shakes fist & looks off into the distance*
I'm not trying to make it seem like this story has secret gypsies, spirits, or magical beings that will free them from the upcoming events. There are spirits in this story. Spirits in another sense. A lot of things seems to be alive, and alive on their own.
They move into the house on Water street. The romance never kindles, despite James's attempts. He builds her a hope chest, to which she leaves empty. The smell reminds her of her family, but James takes her lack of use of it, among other things as her choice not to be a good wife. They eventually have Kathleen. Kathleen is beautiful, and proves to be a very talented singer as she gets older. By then James has already transferred his love for his wife to just love for his daughter. He looks at Materia w/ shame and disgust, often wondering why/ how they were together in the 1st place.

The downfall of a family comes sins of the father.

James has transferred dreams for Kathleen. He pushes her to become a worldwide success. Kathleen is an alienated, child prodigy, who continues to develop into an incredibly beautiful, snobby, talented, young woman. Eventually war consumes their town and the world around it. James goes off to fight his demons or run from them He returns to have Kathleen sent away to NYC to continue her path of success, and rekindle love w/ Materia.

They have Mercedes- a good delicate child, and Frances- nothing but a heathen.
I LOVE FRANCES!!!!!
Materia, takes this as a second chance from God. She has done nothing but care for the house, resent Kathleen, and take abuse from James prior to the new babies. She has thrown herself into being some what of a religious mute, speaking (mostly arabic) when necessary, and seeking mercy and understanding from God. (postpartum depression)
Things get rocky as Kathleen is suddenly brought home from NYC, pregnant.
The story continues to spiral from these events, (Lily is born- Mumma & two babies are dead) and we watch the characters all come into their own, filling the hope chest with their pain and memories, and secrets unfold until the book closes.

And like the sea, it is difficult finding the beginning or where it truly ends...

I won't say more on that because it is really good, and definitely worth enduring. MacDonald created amazing, well developed characters, and a really good plot. I found myself the same way I felt when I read Jane Eyre; I know the ending is coming, a lot has happened, this is good and I don't want it to end but I want to know what is what. Oh! 250 pgs to go.

What I will say is there are so many parallels, metaphors, symbolism, and significant elements throughout the book that I can go on for days and days, but for a few points:

- The hope chest is like Pandora's box to some extent. When opened it brought happiness to some, and painful memories to others until they found redemption

- Redemption : To do something that compensates for the faults or bad aspects of poor or past behavior. FALL ON YOUR KNEES- ask for forgiveness...
a)Mahmoud redeemed himself to some extent when he gave his banished family a home and extended a hand for their 1st born's music lessons. He also redeemed himself by allowing the younger children to marry happily, excusing some customs and embracing the difference. He loses the 1st two, Materia & Camille, but Camille (happily widowed) comes back and Mahmoud gets just desserts.
b) James doesn't exactly find his until he apologizes and tries to make it right by embracing what family really means and showing them. (red boots, giving Frances Kathleen's book)
c) I'm still digesting this part, because I'm still peeved w/ Mercedes- but why should I be mad w/ her when she has redeemed herself- to an extent-with her sisters and attempted to make it all right with the family tree & Lourdes fund. (Lourdes fund? Lord's fund... that might be a stretch)

-Acknowledgement of humanity--- compassion
We are all human, broken in some way at birth, and we will go back into the earth or wash up into the sea just as we came. & ultimately we are all related, sheesh nearly every character! I kept asking, "why are we discussing them in depth. I get it, she's pissed because she lost her job etc, & and she's mad because another woman is after her man..." Now I get it.

- Do we have control over what exactly we become, or are some things inevitable?
(Abuse is at the hands of the creator, there is no excuse for such acts of violence. Violence begets violence & hate is always learned)
& as I mentioned before about the parallels and the way the story weaves...
It was interesting seeing Materia throw herself into religion & Mercedes become religious. Materia was a little wild, and Frances received all of those gifts. I can't help but think that Kathleen maybe took after James's mother. They all definitely had their father's strong will and diligence. I caught myself comparing Mahmoud and James a lot. The way they both came into a marriage, how they arrived on the island, how they lead their families and how they came out of their faults. I also compared Materia's resentment towards Kathleen and the likeness of that in Mercedes's resentment towards Lily.

In all, it was a very good read. I often felt like I was watching ER again, the way the voices faded into one another in a scene just by the touch of an object or the path a person took passing by. I wasn't really left with too many questions, more or less "whys and I wonder if." I think I felt a little guilt, too. Mrs. Luvovitz did, wishing she had spoken up sooner... I, too, had no idea about Frances's grief until the end. & now I'm wondering (& I think I know) who Pete was & where he came from. When I finished last night, I immediately started flipping through Wuthering Heights, looking for something, I'm still not sure. I just wonder what the significance was with Mercedes & Frances hiding precious items in the Charlotte and Emily Bronte's books; & I flipped because I forgot about the epigraph at the very beginning of the book from Wuthering Heights... I will be re-reading that in the very near future. For the sins of the father, I wonder if this is why he never recieves a son of his own...
I give it 3 stars (plus or minus one). I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it might be in my top 5 (that, I'm still developing) but I wasn't too keen or disappointed at how the ending came about. Like the ending of a good song, or leaving the beach, I'm just glad I experienced it.

This started out amazing, just the kind of quirky family saga I love: Irish piano tuner meets Lebanese girl on Canadian island off Nova Scotia in the early 1900s and they have three daughters, one of whom dreams of becoming an opera singer in New York City. The author has no problem killing off what seem to be important characters left and right, so you have to just roll with it and adjust to new central characters. There are a lot of surprising and almost grotesque moments, but they are overlaid with a touch of magic realism. The novel also gives a tour through early 20th-century history, with the patriarch James Piper going off to fight in World War I and later becoming a bootlegger during Prohibition.

However, the book started to lose me during the 1920s when Frances starts working in a speakeasy, and by the 1930s my interest was pretty much gone, especially because there is a lot of going backward to explore with happened with Kathleen. Cut by 200 pages, with the remainder tightened up, this could have been 5 stars. Instead, I found it bloated and, past a certain point, hardly believable. A shame, as I was going to feature it as an autumn special (Fall) and then, when I failed to finish it in time, as a Christmas one (the title line is from my favorite carol).

Some favorite lines:

“The Pipers--living like hillbillies, acting like royalty.”

“fact and truth become separated and commence to wander like twins in a fairy tale, waiting to be reunited by that special someone who possesses the secret of telling them apart.”

“no good act is ever unaccompanied by evil.”

A novel full of dark secrets, revealed gradually over the course of its immense length. I had this book on my shelf for over three years before attempting to read it, wondering how the author would sustain my interest over its 560-plus pages. And, once making the bold attempt to finally pick-up the book, I had difficulty putting it down at times.

The novel is visual, reminiscent of a screenplay. MacDonald uses a variety of techniques to hook the reader: the rapid mixing of tenses and point-of-view, anchoring the story along pivotal events and replaying those scenes from different vantage points like different camera angles applied for the same screen shot, hiding information in scenes and gradually revealing more clues in subsequent takes of the same scene, using combinations of journal, memory, snappy and irreverent dialogue and tight unconventional narrative that focuses on visual imagery rather than on syntactical propriety - yes, a masterful performance for a first novel, and great learning for emerging novelists.

This story has a resemblance to the King Lear tale but is not as obvious as in recent re-takes such as Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres". The patriarch, James Piper, marries a Lebanese child-bride and begets daughters, some whose mothers are unclear until the end. There is Kathleen the budding opera singer, Frances the evil one, Mercedes the pious one, and the crippled Lilly the saint. Incest is at the core, which hobbles and fractures the family over a time horizon spanning the dawn of the twentieth century to the 1950's

Pivotal events such as Kathleen's tragic birthing of twins and its series of catastrophic aftershocks, Frances' shooting and the events that precede and follow, the unravelling of what happened to Kathleen in New York - are all launching points to move the story forward and grip the reader in a non-stop read.

The four sisters emerge gradually from their childhood as the indistinguishable offspring of James Piper, into fully flushed characters with different personalities and histories over the time span of this novel. Unfortunately, Momma, or Materia their Lebanese mother, gets no accolades for the girls' destiny, apart from a few Arabic words they banter around, and the occasional Middle Eastern dish they prepare for James. Daddy, in his twisted, well meaning way, gets all the credit for the disasters that befell their lives.

A great read, I recommend it.

A wild, dark and brutal family saga, highly recommend but be aware! The metaphors in this book were sensational and the story of this family was told ! I'm definitely glad I own two more book by this author x

An amazingly harsh view of the hardships of life.

This book is most definitely one of my favorites. It is absolutely amazing. It's scandalous, it's real, it's intriguing, it's just plain -good-! MacDonald's writing style creates an interactive world that pulls you in to first person view of the characters' lives.

The story follows the Piper family, a unique little set up of father and four daughters. Mr. Piper's wife has passed, leaving him to fend for himself in a home bursting to the seams with the drama of being a young girl growing up with three other sisters. Kathleen, the eldest of the girls, has been sent away to live out her father's vision of fame and perfection with her glorious voice. Left behind are Frances (a fiesty middle child who lives by her own rules), Lily (the youngest of the four, living with a crippled leg and a strong desire to please and do good), and Mercedes (the second eldest, longing to take the place of their late mother and following her faith closely and fiercely). Each girl has their own story which is brimming with secrets that are both outrageous and real. Mystery is around every corner, and controversy hides behind each one.
If I had to describe it in one word, it would be "intense". Every story is intertwined in surprising and unexpected ways. It's difficult to not fall in love with someone in the novel because there really is somebody for everyone to relate to.

If you can stomach some harsh, dramatic reality with believable characters in a world covered with a dark veil of the unexpected, then this book may be the right way to go.

2.5 stars !

Jaidee fell on his knees and screamed

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!"

How can a book that is written well with many excellent elements cause such dire frustration and become a hodgepodge mess????

Ms. Macdonald is a very good writer with wonderful ideas that seem limitless but unfortunately she tried to fit them all in the span of one novel. There are a thousand stories in here and none get developed. She creates a number of interesting characters only to plaster them with more and more make-up and gaudier and gaudier costumes that take them from being flesh and blood to Vaudeville players.

This book is like taking first rate ingredients and putting them all together in a stew without any thought to how they will taste together.

She piles dysfunction on top of dysfunction on top of dysfunction so that something that is initially interesting becomes histrionic and then just plain tedious.

I will try another novel of hers at some point and see if she has been able to direct her talent into something more cohesive, whole and ultimately satisfying.

I kept picking it up and putting it down in frustration. I know so many people loved it, but when I saw it come up on Oprah's book list I just wanted to die. So much was happening, but being written about in the most boring way possible. It didn't hold my interest, which is rare since as a Canadian I was brought up on the typical Canadian novel diet. It amazes me how so many Canadian writers can write books where lots of big important things happen, yet do it in a way that just makes them so b.o.r.i.n.g. It also amazes me that this is what passes for a good Canadian novel. The content was interesting, but executed badly.

I know now that I have read the saddest book of 2020.
I love it.
I hate it.
I mourn it.
I cherish it.
I just want to go back and fix it but I can’t. I just have to drink my tea and listen. I guess.
You will have to read to the very last word if you want to know why the book is called fall on your knees.


“Having experienced her own disappearance, she’s conscious of how important it is for people to be seen, so when she looks at them – even the blind one - she also looks for them, just in case they to have got lost and need finding.”

I have had this piece by Ann-Marie MacDonald on my to-read shelf for a significant amount of time, but never found the time to read it. When I took the plunge, I kicked myself for waiting so long, as there was a great deal to enjoy within it and seems worthy of the accolades it’s received. New Waterford, Nova Scotia is a small town on Cape Breton Island, along Canada’s East Coast. At the turn of the 20th century, things were bustling and the population quite varied. It was this that brought James Piper and Materia Mahmoud together in a union of forbidden love. James, who is without a strong religious morality, did not sit well with the staunch Catholic Mahmouds, whose Lebanese background left them little choice but to disown Materia. Once married, the Pipers began building the foundation of their family, which included a slew of daughters: Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances, and much later on, Lily. What follows is a tale of drama and intrigue that pushes the Pipers to the brink. In a family so apparently tightly-woven is a pile of secrets, both from the outside world and amongst themselves, that no unit could be expected to come out of it without cracks. With a skill all her own, Kathleen heads to New York City to pursue a dream while James leaves to fight in the Great War for Canada (and Britain). By the end of the skirmish, both of them would experience life-altering events that would change the narrative forever. Struck by a number of tragedies in short order, the Pipers grow and evolve in a multi-generational story that exemplifies how decisions are catalysts for familial metamorphosis. As the years pass, some of these secrets come to the surface, while new and devastating ones emerge, taking these Piper women to new depths as they try to define themselves against the backdrop of an ever-changing small-town Canada feel. Brilliant in its delivery, MacDonald holds the reader’s attention throughout. Recommended to those who love familial sagas that build on themselves, as well as the reader who prefers small-town stories and their unique narrative pathways.

I remember reading another of MacDonald’s novels years ago and being fully committed from the get-go. The story, the style, and the characters all came together nicely and left me wanting more. However, I never found the push to reach for this book and actually read it until now. This story sees many of the Pipers take the protagonist’s seat and so I won’t choose just one. That being said, I can admit that all of these characters come together effectively to complement one another and help thicken the plot while aiding in creating wonderful backstory and development for one another. From the struggles of raising a family in the early 20th century to familial abandonment, the shock of war to the loss of a loved one, the confusion of one’s place in the family unit to finding a place in the world. All these are struggles faced throughout this powerful book whose narrative never lets the reader take a breath. MacDonald contrasts all these against a time when speaking out was less fashionable and the mighty hand came down on those who stepped out of line. Using Nova Scotia as a setting was brilliant, as it adds even more to the story, both for its wonderful scenery and less electrified feel. McDonald is able to inject some big city moments in New York, but there is something about the sheltered life on Cape Breton that spoke to me. With detailed chapters that serve more as family vignettes, MacDonald paints a wonderful picture of events as they progress throughout history. While this is a long book, it is sure to grip the reader in such a way that the pages will flow easily and the plot will keep the story moving. Patience is a virtue and MacDonald rewards that type of reader throughout this piece.

Kudos, Madam MacDonald, for this stunning piece that opened my eyes to so very much about the time, the region, and your writing!

Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

For 15 years (1996-2010), Oprah Winfrey picked books for her book club. Out of the 69 titles that she chose only 13 (19%) have appeared in at least any of the three (2006, 2008, 2010) editions of Boxall’s 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die:

4 by TONI MORRISON (Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon)

2 by CHARLES DICKENS (A Tale of the Two Cities and Great Expectations)

2 by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ (One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera)

1 each by LEO TOLSTOY (Anna Karenina), ALAN PATTON (Cry, My Beloved Country), JONATHAN FRANZEN (The Corrections), BARBARA KINGSOLVER (The Poisonwood Bible), BERNARD SCHLINK (The Reader), and ANN-MARIE MACDONALD.

Wait, Ann-Marie, who?

You see, for me, her name does not really ring a bell. Similar to the names of others in the list like Pearl Cleage, Sheri Reynolds, Mary McGarry Morris, Edwidge Danticat, Billie Leats, Bret Lott, Melinda Haynes, Breena Clarke, Gwyn Hayman Rubio and Malika Oufkir. I think, they all became household names because their books were picked by Oprah. What was being included in the Most Influential People lists for so many years if she could not rally people to read her chosen books.

I must admit that I read David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth because of Oprah’s stamp. However, I have had no motivation to read right away her other choices including Fall on Your Knees because of what Jonathan Franzen said in the interview that Oprah’s picks catered more for readers who were women than men.

On the superficial level, that still is my main comment for this book, Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald. The story of 3 sisters: Kathleen the eldest. She is beautiful, a musical genius and an apple of the eye of his father; Mercedes, may not be as pretty as her siblings but she stood as the mother for her sisters when their mother died; Frances is as beautiful as Kathleen and she suffered in the hands of their father when the latter came back from the war. Joining them is Lily who is the daughter of Kathleen and a twin of the baby infant Ambrose who accidentally died in the hands of Frances when he and Lily were born. The 3 sisters’ mother, Materia completes the list of female characters. She is the only daughter of a wealthy Lebanese businessman. She defied her parents who wished that she would marry a dentist by eloping with her husband, James. So, the only male main character is the father James who may be good-intentioned and has big dreams for her children but he is weak to resist temptation and to overcome the psychological effects of war.

So, there you go: 5 strong female characters versus 1 weak male character. So the mostly female adorers of Oprah cheer and clap their hands when Oprah raises the book and says “Hail, hail, read this book as I could not keep my hands from flipping over the pages while reading this!”

However, for me, there are three saving graces for this book. And this maybe the reason why Oprah just flipped and flipped the pages till the wee hours of the morning:

1. Brilliant first chapter that begins with “They are all dead now” then you follow the camera that zooms in to the things that the previous occupants of the house possessed and used.

2. Character-driven plot. Mac-Donald’s characters are bigger than the old familiar themes (family love, sisterly love, incest, war, etc) that we have all seen in the movies and read in similar books. Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres easily came to my mind. For one, MacDonald was never melodramatic and you don’t close the book feeling emotionally cheated.

3. Having said that, the denouement is well-handled. The use of the family tree not only wraps up the whole story but it provides the symbolism of the book’s main theme: family love, that no matter what we do, at the end of our lives, what matters most is our family. Then when you close the book, you know who the narrator of the first chapter should be. Well thought of novel. Well organized. Well written. For a first time writer, this is just amazing.

Now, I no longer wonder why the Boxall’s 1001 editors chose this book over the more popular Oprah titles like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, The Pillars of the Earth, The Road, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, East of Eden, I Know This Much is True, She’s Come Undone or The Deep End of the Ocean.