Fall on Your Knees

Lily stays sitting. “Frances. What if Ambrose is the Devil?” “He’s not the Devil. I know who the Devil is and it isn’t Ambrose.” “Who’s the Devil?” Frances crouches down as if she were talking to Trixie. “That’s something I’ll never tell you, Lily, no matter how old you get to be, because the Devil is shy. It makes him angry when someone recognizes him, so once they do the Devil gets after them. And I don’t want the Devil to get after you.” “Is the Devil after you?”
“Yes.”

This is Ann-Marie MacDonald's debut novel. I need to keep reminding myself about this fact that it's a debut novel because it is a polished work of complexity and beauty.

Fall on Your Knees, set in Cape Breton at in the first half show more of the 20th century, tells the story of Materia, Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances, and Lily - i.e. all the women of the Piper family. Each woman has a voice, a distinct history, a distinct outlook on life - and a distinct fate. So, really this is a novel with five main characters - not to mention James, who dwells at the centre of all their lives.

This book has so many layers that it was easy to be sucked into the world of the Pipers. But it is not a comfortable place. Far from it, it is a world full of harshness, brutality, and abuse, where each of the characters is trying to escape the confines of what holds them. Be it religion, loyalty, or something else - each character has their own form of imprisonment.

"God did not put me on this earth to stand by while my sister Frances is killed. Beaten is one thing. Wrongly touched is one thing. Stabbed with a bayonet is another. Push. Be strong enough to carry the burden of sin that goes with doing the right thing. There is only one saint in this family and I’m not it. God has made Mercedes a judge. No one loves you for that. Not like a crippled child who’s prone to visions. Whom Mercedes prizes. Not like a fallen woman who makes people laugh. Whom Mercedes loves."

When reading some of the reviews, the aspect that I have picked up on most is that people have read this because it was an Oprah bookclub read. I am usually hesitant to follow up hyped up books, but sometimes, just sometimes, they are a exactly the type of book that will work their way into your soul.

Fall on Your Knees is a perfectly constructed family saga, but it is also more than this. It is a beautifully sketched insight into the human condition.

Mercedes is neither a saint nor a sinner. She is somewhere in between. She is why purgatory was invented. show less

This was a re-read after more than 20 years. This book was, for those years, in my top three fiction reads of all time. Not sure it's still there, but I loved it all over again. Despite remembering almost every aspect of t he plot. The writing carried me through, as did the compelling characters (Mercedes is particularly well written) and the story. I also enjoyed the many cultural references that evoked so many memories (the author and I are almost the same age).

Ms. MacDonald controls revelations so that there are surprises nearly up to the end of the book. She writes in clear style, but not graphic. Her revelations are subtle until you are smacked in the fact by your own understanding.

There are so many themes here. This time, I found show more myself reflecting on the contract in coping mechanisms -- and consequences -- for Frances vs. Mercedes. And I'm not sure I fully understand why Frances so badly wanted a baby.

Excellent book. show less

Fall On Your Knees is a big, messy car wreck of a novel, and it has a car wreck's macabre pull. The book touches on many nasty subjects, including incest and suicide, yet it held my interest throughout its significant length. The key to its power lies largely in the girls at the centre of the narrative, the four unlucky daughters of James Piper. The characters were each distinctive and well-drawn, carrying between them many moments of heartbreak and dark humour. MacDonald did go over the top with the 'quirkiness' at times, making this a book I would not recommend to others but which I did, despite everything, enjoy.

MacDonald's novel is intense, gothic, and at times overwhelming in the telling of the lives of the Piper family in the early twentieth century, whose secrets shape the lives of the children in various ways. James sets trouble in motion when he eloped with 13-year-old Materia to the disgust of her family, but soon becomes disgusted with her himself for her childishness and Lebanese heritage. His only consolation is their stunning firstborn Kathleen, with the beauty and operatic voice of an angel. When his love for her threatens to consume him to the point of incest, he takes drastic measures to distract himself, such as enlisting in Word War I, and fathering more children with Materia. The surviving children, Mercedes and Frances, grow show more up to be different as night and day, but they cling to each other for support throughout their parents' dysfunctional, and often abusive, marriage. As the two grow into adulthood, secrets from their past threaten them from the shadows, devastating mistakes from childhood haunt them in disjointed pieces, and one sister dies as another takes her place. This new sister, Lily, becomes the catalyst through which the surviving Pipers attempt to redeem themselves. The enduring mystery is left hanging over the family until the end: What exactly happened to Kathleen during her trip to NYC while training to become a famous singer that caused her to return ruined, pregnant, and silent?

The novel is lengthy, but engrossing enough to keep the reader pushing onward. Each character alternates between sympathetic and unsympathetic, hovering between forgiveness and unforgivable. This aura of purgatory fits in well with the theme of Catholicism and its associated subthemes,sin, baptism, and redemption. This is aided by the perspective changing from character to character without notice; the reader slips in and out of every character's mind in a godlike way.

The story takes bizarre turns, and sometimes the reader is left to wonder if certain events really happened, or if they are not being remembered correctly by the characters. Their motives are not always explained, but left to a sort of mysticism as an explanation. This is never more apparent than with the character of Frances, whose devastating mission she feels is for Lily's benefit threatens to tear everyone apart, but somehow becomes redeemed through it. I fear that MacDonald left a lot to be explained after the crescendo of the climax.

On the whole, the novel flows with descriptive prose that is very dreamlike. This was effective in all parts except in the few action sequences, which made it difficult to discern time and concrete fact. (Think the shaky-camera effect in films.) I had to go back and reread a few passages to get a firmer idea on what was going on. But the dreamy quality is what makes the novel work, and why some of its most harrowing content can be endured. Like the characters, we tell ourselves that the worst of it is a dream, move on, keep moving on, and hope it doesn't haunt us, like it haunts the Pipers. show less

Since this book's already been around for nearly fifteen years, was an international bestseller and an Oprah's Book Club selection and won numerous honors, what the hell am I gonna say about it that will matter? I discovered it late, certainly, but wow, this is a powerful story, and will still be a hundred years from now! Any book that is billed as a multi-generational 'family saga' usually puts me off, but this one is marked by a quirky, dark gallows kind of humor, as well as totally unexpected and shocking twists, and grabbed my attention from the very start and held it for over five hundred pages to its bitter end. All of its characters are well realized and rivetingly real as rendered by MacDonald. The twisted and tortured Piper show more family of Cape Breton Island are unforgettable - James and Materia, as well as the brood of daughters: Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances and Lily. I read the book in just a few days and these people are still showing up as half-recognized ghosts in my dreams. Because so many things happen in this book, and many of these events are unexpected and shocking, I'm not going into any specifics, as I abhor spoilers in reviews - and most specific comments would spoil something. You'll have to take my word for it (and probably the words of hundreds of thousands other readers), this book is simply one hell of a ride. I've made a promise to myself to read MacDonald's other book before too long, and I've noticed that one is over 800 pages long! No matter. This girl can WRITE! show less

I loved this book, and I don’t hand out 5 stars often. It had everything I appreciate in a book: beautiful writing, a perfectly rendered setting, unforgettable characters, and a storyline that kept me turning pages right up to the last page, and then going back to revisit sections and images.

Although my copy of [Fall On Your Knees] is over 500 pages long, I never would have called this a long book. I read other books this month that though shorter, felt much longer.

The setting is Cape Breton Island, off Nova Scotia, just before World War I. James Piper, whose mother had taught him “to read the classics, to play piano and to expect something finer in spite of everything,” moves to Sydney, the only city on the island, to try his show more luck tuning pianos for a living. He falls in love with Materia Mahmoud, the twelve (yes, twelve) year old daughter of a Lebanese family whose piano he tunes. They run off and get married, and are disowned by her large and prosperous family. Mrs. Mahmoud, who reads fortunes in tea leaves, feels both sorrow and “a chill. For she had seen something in his cup.”

Bad things happen to the Piper family and the four Piper sisters, Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances and Lily. In fact, very bad things. It is a grim family saga laced with dark humor. But although this is a story about damage, it is also about resilience and love.

Breathtaking writing:
The night is bright with the moon. Look down over Water Street. On the lonely stretch between where the houses end and where the sea bites into the land, a tree casts a network of shadow that stirs and bloats in one spot, as though putting forth dark fruit that droops, then drops from the bough. It’s a figure come out from under the branches and onto the street. It stops, drifting in place like a plant on the ocean floor. Then it travels again all the way down the street to the graveyard.

Humor:
Lily’s foot is bleeding. She doesn’t know it, because the bagpipes are drowning out the pain. This is what bagpipes are designed to do.

A sense of place:
Mrs. Luvovitz looks at the sea and thinks, when did this become my home? When I buried Benny here? When the second war came? She cannot discern the moment. She just knows that every time she returns to Cape Breton, she feels in her bones, this is my home. That is why she has declined to move permanently to Montreal. She spends half the year there. She loves her daughter-in-law, would you believe? And her five grandchildren who are only each perfect. They speak French at home, English at school and Yiddish with every second shopkeeper. Real Canadians.

One more thing about this book that spoke to me in a personal way: The Mahmouds are Catholic, and the Piper children are raised Catholic, so elements of Catholicism permeate the novel. It is a Catholicism of childhood—rosaries and guardian angels and purgatory and penance and Saint Bernadette--and it felt comfortingly familiar to me, taking me straight back to my own childhood. show less

The lives of four Nova Scotia sisters in the early years of the 20th century on the isolated island of Cape Breton. Gifted, bright and beautiful, their lives are blighted by the heavy hand of their father and the mental dissolution of their mother. Tragedy and horror strike, but sisterly love, sometimes twisted and destructive, survives. Told in bold, beautiful language, jaunty and almost musical, their lives are brilliantly, emotionally rendered with exquisite empathy and pathos. A beautiful book, that looks unflinchingly at things that are difficult to read, it is nonetheless always impossible to put down.