Reviews
A sprawling saga about five generations of a family from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is the impressive first fiction from Canadian playwright and actor Ann-Marie MacDonald. This epic tale of family history, family secrets, and music centers on four sisters and their relationships with each other and with their father. Set in the coal-mining communities of Nova Scotia in the early part of this century, the story also shifts to the battlefields of World War I and the jazz scene of New York City in the 1920s.

The New York Times Book Review, John Motyka
The Canadian actress and playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald writes of several generations of a Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, family in this resonant first novel... Ms. MacDonald skillfully shifts the story backward and forward in time, giving it a mythic quality that allows dark, half-buried secrets to be gracefully and chillingly revealed.

From AudioFile
Ann-Marie MacDonald's family saga, set on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island and published in 1996, is enjoying a deserved renaissance since being stamped with the Oprah symbol. It's an unforgettable novel that deserves more than one reading, and this recording is an enjoyable way to revisit it. But the abridgment, while fine as these things go, cuts out so much of the novel's intricacy that it won't do for a reader's first foray into MacDonald's world. Nikki James has to contend with sprinklings of Gaelic and Lebanese, but other than a few cloying voices (always children or men) and her inability to correctly pronounce blancmange, she's comfortable with the text. It's just too bad there isn't more of it. D.B. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
A family pays the wages of lust in this memorable first novel, for it is most often lust that leads to unsuitable if not unholy couplings in the Piper family of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, in the early part of this century. Eighteen-year-old piano tuner James Piper is so smitten with 12-year-old Materia Mahmoud that he entices her from her traditional Lebanese family to marry him. Before she's 14 the untutored Materia gives birth to Kathleen, the beautiful and gifted child whom she is unable to love but whom James takes to his heart. There are more daughters: Mercedes, the good girl who becomes the little mother; Other Lily, who dies unbaptized when one day old; Frances, the bad girl who becomes a bawdy entertainer and worse; and Kathleen's daughter, Lily, the saintly crippled girl who will learn the secrets and find resolution and redemption. Actress-playwright MacDonald is a talented storyteller with a crisp yet lilting prose style that captures equally well the atmospheres of World War I trenches and Harlem jazz clubs. Michele Leber

From Kirkus Reviews
From award-winning Canadian actress and playwright MacDonald comes a full-bodied, ever-rolling debut, the story of a talented Cape Breton family with more than its share of repression and tragedy. As the 19th century ends, young James Piper travels from the Breton hinterland to the civilized port of Sydney seeking his fortune, and in no time at all he acquires a child bride, a house built by his Lebanese father-in-law, and the everlasting enmity of his wife's powerful family. Although the ardor between James and his spouse soon cools, they now have a daughter, Kathleen, who seems destined for great things when her breathtaking voice and beauty begin to captivate all as she enters her teens. But another shadow falls on the family when James finds himself making improper advances to her. Appalled, he patches things up with his wife (two more daughters being the result), goes off to fight in WW I, and sends Kathleen to New York to study voice after he returns. All still isn't well, however, when she comes home pregnant six months later, then dies in childbirth when Mom slices her open to save her daughter's twins. One of them dies anyway, followed two days later by Mom, who commits suicide. James is left with three girls to raise, all of them scarred for life by the crisis: The newborn contracts polio when her aunt Frances, a child herself, tries to baptize her in a nearby creek; Frances is raped by James in his grief at losing Kathleen; the eldest, a witness to the rape, is also the one to find her mother's body. Such awful events, though quickly repressed, bode no good for the family, and ultimately tragedy overtakes them all. A plate piled dangerously high with calamities, perhaps, but the time, place, and people- -especially the children--all ring clear and true, making for an accomplished, considerably affecting saga. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
"Magnetic? a dizzying leap into a mind so rich and complex you spend almost as much time marvelling how she got there as enjoying the results? Compelling and original? MacDonald succeeds brilliantly in building a world that, at least for the satisfying length of time it takes to finish Fall On Your Knees, gloriously supersedes all else." ? Financial Post

"Beautiful? this big, bold, epic shocker of a novel reads as if John Irving met Joyce Carol Oates. It is history told with a thumping, complex narrative? a host of colourful characters and a great big bow to psychology? Fall On Your Knees is the work of a big talent. It's a wild ride." ? Chicago Tribune

"[MacDonald is] a first-rate novelist.... [She] paints a Cape Breton landscape steeped in human emotion ... She has found the language of the heart that runs below everyday discourse.... There is no resisting this story." ? The Globe and Mail

"Ann-Marie MacDonald ? one of Canada's most talented actors and playwrights ? has provided us with yet another aspect of a talent that has no limits." ? Timothy Findley

"Brilliant... Profoundly and refreshingly different.... MacDonald has constructed a plot worthy of Victor Hugo... A standout." ? Vancouver Sun

"MacDonald is a master of exciting story-telling, of suspense and surprise." ? The Montreal Gazette

"... a narrative presence that can look at the unbearable, and sustain the emotion of it, and deliver it up edged in mordant wit." ?EDITOR'S CHOICE, Notable Books of 1996, The Globe and Mail

"... a multi-generational saga ... carried off with great assurance and style." ? Philip Marchand, CRITIC'S CHOICE, The Toronto Star

"... utterly compelling ? a brilliant take on the black themes of racism, physical and emotional battery, sexual abuse, suicide, and murder." ? The Vancouver Review

"Stunning...The book and the talent behind it are big. The story is riveting, the characters achingly human, and the writing will take your breath away...[MacDonald] has leapt into the first rank of fiction writers." ? Toronto Star

"A delicious story, one of those sweeping family sagas to take on summer vacation and savor.... MacDonald is a master of exciting story-telling, of suspense and surprise. She has a dramatic touch that can elicit gasps from readers." ? Montreal Gazette

"Not a single line is superfluous in this richly layered tale of the secrets within several generations of a Canadian family." ? Publisher's Weekly starred review February 24th, 1997

"Here is an explosive mix of family feuds and incest, musical dreams and melodrama, all shot through with a fierce guilt... Fall On Your Knees is a heady, haunting brew, carefully structured, witty and distinctive." ? The London Observer

"Some wonderful writing has come out of Canada in recent years from such authors as Robertson Davies and Margaret Atwood. Now they are joined by the multi-talented Ann-Marie MacDonald... She is already a successful actress & playwright. It seems almost unfair that she should have written a brilliant first novel." ? Sunday Telegraph

FROM OUR EDITORS

Much-lauded Canadian actress and playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald -- winner of several prestigious drama awards for her play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) -- turns her hand to fiction with this remarkable debut novel. The sweeping saga of a deeply troubled Nova Scotia family, Fall on Your Knees is an anguished yet wise and darkly humorous tale that weaves deftly back and forth in time to cover five generations of the Piper clan -- from late-19th-century Nova Scotia to the battlefields of World War I to Manhattan's vibrant 1920s music scene, and back to Nova Scotia. MacDonald gracefully tackles tragic events and disturbing secrets -- rape, incest, death, disease, the stigma of out-of-wedlock pregnancy -- that come to light as family members search for truth, understanding, and redemption.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Following the curves of history in the first half of the twentieth century, Fall on Your Knees takes us from haunted Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, through the battlefields of World War I, to the emerging jazz scene in New York City, and into the lives of four unforgettable sisters. The mythically charged family—James, a father of intelligence and immense ambition; Materia, his Lebanese child-bride; and their daughters: Kathleen, the eldest, a beautiful talent preparing for a career as an opera diva; Frances, incorrigible liar and hell-bent bad girl; Mercedes, obsessive Catholic and protector of the flock; and Lily, the adored invalid who takes us on a quest for truth and redemption—is supported by a richly textured cast of characters. Fall on Your Knees is a story of inescapable family bonds, of terrible secrets, of miracles, racial strife, attempted murder, birth and death, and forbidden love.

FROM THE CRITICS

AudioFile

Ann-Marie MacDonald's family saga, set on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island and published in 1996, is enjoying a deserved renaissance since being stamped with the Oprah symbol. It's an unforgettable novel that deserves more than one reading, and this recording is an enjoyable way to revisit it. But the abridgment, while fine as these things go, cuts out so much of the novel's intricacy that it won't do for a reader's first foray into MacDonald's world. Nikki James has to contend with sprinklings of Gaelic and Lebanese, but other than a few cloying voices (always children or men) and her inability to correctly pronounce blancmange, she's comfortable with the text. It's just too bad there isn't more of it. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Philippa Gregory - The London Sunday Times

A magnificent novel...[Fall on Your Knees] falls into the current traditions of a big story widely told, a story of historical change in a community of crime half-revealed through a family's memories and fearful secrets slowly revealed.

Emma Perry - Time Out London

A phenomenal novel....These are the sorts of characters, both beautiful and ugly, who stay with you forever.

Industries Staff Scosche - Chicago Tribune

This big, bold, epic-shocker of a novel reads as if John Irving met Joyce Carol Oats in her Gothic.￯﾿ﾽIt's a wild ride.

Rachel Stoll - San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle

At her brightest moments, when various cultures and voices clash and merge in a great rush of energetic prose, MacDonald nears Rushdie-like height. Read all 9 "From The Critics" >

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