FREE SHIPPING ON ORDERS OVER $25 *SEE DETAILS
Advanced Search

In Books
  • All Departments
  • In Books
  • In Bargain Books
  • In eReading
  • In Kids' Books
  • In Teens' Books
  • In Toys & Games
  • In Video Games
  • In Lifestyle & Paper
  • In Movies & TV
  • In Music
  • In Used & Rare Books
  • In Used & Rare Movies & TV
  • In Used & Rare Music
Fall on Your Knees

Average rating: 4/5

Based on 507 ratings

Rate this

Fall on Your Knees

by Ann-marie Macdonald

Knopf Canada | December 6, 1998 | Trade Paperback

"What a wild ride - I couldn't turn the pages fast enough," Oprah Winfrey told her viewers as she announced Fall on Your Knees as her February 2002 Book Club selection. Set largely in a Cape Breton coal mining community called New Waterford, ranging through four generations, Ann-Marie MacDonald's dark, insightful and hilarious first novel focuses on the Piper sisters and their troubled relationship with their father, James. Winner of the 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, it was a national bestseller in Canada for two years, and it has been translated into 17 languages.

At the start of the 20th century, James Piper sets fire to his dead mother's piano and heads out across Cape Breton Island to find a new place to live, eventually eloping with 13-year-old Materia Mahmoud, the daughter of wealthy, traditional Lebanese parents. And so, from early on, Ann-Marie MacDonald establishes some major themes: racial tension, isolation, passion and forbidden love, which will gradually lead to incest, death in childbirth, and even murder. At the centre of this epic story is the nature of family love, beginning with the Piper sister who depend on one another for survival. Their development as characters - beautiful Kathleen, the promising diva; saintly Mercedes; Frances, the mischievous bad girl, who tries to bear the family's burden; and disabled Lily, everyone's favourite - forms the heart of the novel. And then there is James, their flawed father.

Moving from Cape Breton Island to the battlefields of World War I, to Harlem in New York's Jazz Age and the Depression, the tense and enthralling plot of Fall on Your Knees contains love, pain, death, joy, and triumph. The structure of the narrative is multi-faceted, richly layered, and shifts back and forth through time as it approaches the story from different angles, "giving it a mythic quality that allows dark, half buried secrets to be gracefully and chillingly revealed" (The New York Times Book Review). As the details of the labyrinthine plot are pulled together, the question of whether it is possible to escape one's family history gradually raises itself.

The book's epigraph, taken from Wuthering Heights, seems appropriate to a novel concerned with the different, often violent, forms that love can take. On the inexorable journey towards tragedy we encounter dark yet vivid images of neglect and violence, yet the novel radiates an unquenchable life-force, and yet the novel radiates an unquenchable life-force, shimmering with emotional depth, sensual with virtuoso descriptions of the power of music. It is a saga haunted by ghosts and saints, religious fanaticism and magic. MacDonald gives the most ordinary lives extraordinarily dramatic dimensions.

The Sunday Times wrote, "It is the unpredictability of this huge book that is its greatest joy." With allusions ranging from Hollywood stars to religious tracts, Fall on Your Knees simmers with vibrancy and crackling, effervescent, breathtaking language.

Save 24 %

$23.00
$17.48
$16.61

In Stock

Add To Cart
Qty
Used from $5.24
All Editions Online Member
Kobo Edition (eBook) $14.29 n/a

  • Eligible for FREE Shipping on orders over $25. + Details.

Reviews

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    Rating: 3/5

    I was a little disappointed.

    LibraryCin

    • Top Book Reviewer

    6 weeks ago

    3.25 stars

    It is the early 1900s in Nova Scotia. 13-year old Materia falls for James, so she breaks away from her arranged marriage her parents have made for her and marries James, only to be disowned by her parents. James dotes on their first daughter, Kathleen and though, years later, they have more daughters, their marriage turns sour. The book not only follows them, but follows their daughters during their lives.

    I was a little disappointed. I really liked The Way the Crow Flies, but for me, this wasn't nearly as interesting. It didn't grab me or hold my interest. I really didn't like any of the characters, which always makes it harder for me to enjoy a book. I wasn't compelled to pick up the book and/or to keep reading. Overall, I thought it was o.k., but nothing special.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?
    Tanya Giancaspro

    Rating: 5/5

    amazing

    Tanya Giancaspro

    3 months ago

    i've read it 3 times already. great book. shocking and memorable.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?
    Eilythea Senis

    Rating: 1/5

    Non fiction truth in a fictional world

    Eilythea Senis

    14 months ago

    This novel may possibly be the key hole to many of our silenced victims' lives, whether they've been consumed by unwanted penetration, bewildered, hindered from accomplishing equality, and brought down to desperation to the full extent; even without knowing it. Fall On Your Knees is an incredibly written fiction in which history, culture, and the hidden disturbances of social issues, have been composed into one. It can be difficult to comprehend, and attempting to soak up each word may take courage.

    For the willing eyes that seek to discover the non fiction's secret truths in a fictional world, it is best to be warned to open up your mind before opening the pages that expose humanity's filth. Without an open mind, it is guaranteed to injure the mind of one that is weak. It is not advised to read the novel as casual. The key to reading one that exposes the human world takes a lot of comprehension, dissection, and evaluation. In order to survive a novel that holds so much, it is best to keep your logic on guard, while your emotions are kept tamed. In refusing to do so, it would not be a surprise to find yourself unable to cope with the mental disturbances and emotional grievances you've welcomed by not reading it with a controlled heart and careful eyes.

    pg 375

    One would consider this as perverted. But only those with perverted minds would look over these passages again and again constantly while quoting it without a purpose. There is purpose in what Ann-Marie has written in this excerpt from the book. Hurt, heaviness and hate was the goal of this passage. She intended to cause her audience to be appalled, abashed, and abhorred. Not only was she genius in doing so, but she included a response in which her character "Frances" has comforted her watchful sister after the incident. This response, in which a 6 year old has assured to her slightly older sister, was well composed to cause heartbreak in her audience.

    "I keep looking at each other until he falls asleep like that, then she crawls out from behind his arms and walks over to me.
    'It doesn't hurt', she says." - pg. 376

    The author, Ann-Marie Macdonald has obviously put a lot of thought in this novel. Palpably enough, it is blatant that Ann-Marie has been careful to select the right words, and combine them together to create the impact she has intended it to be. If put into a symbolic image, Fall On Your Knees is like an immaculate white house. It shines, and sparkles. But everyone that passes by it does not feel the innocence the house is supposed to hold present. And if one dares to enter, they find that the white house is not as immaculate as it imitates itself to be. Instead, past the sturdy bricks of white, you see that the paint is peeling off, and inside the house it is nothing but dusty and bloody. There are no people, but it is not empty; it is haunted.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?
    Von Darnell

    Rating: 5/5

    totally excellent

    Von Darnell

    13 years ago

    Fall on your Knees is one of the stand-out books of the last few years. Fresh but savvy in its approach, MacDonald gives us a model to understand the Canadian mental landscape by. We are by turns uplifted, humbled, and strengthened through our journey with the Pipers. MacDonald has already delighted us with her Goodnight Desdemona, Good morning Juliet, and with Fall on Your Knees, she's set her sights on joining other great Canadian luminaries, such as Robertson Davies. Like Davies' works, MacDonald doesn't sacrifice the primacy of story-telling to style. Fall on Your Knees is going to stand as a landmark novel, an important translation of who we are, culled from who we used to be.

see more

Details

From Our Editors

Ann-Marie MacDonald's heroine, Frances Piper, joins Margaret Laurence's Hagar Shipley and Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne as one of the most fascinating and multifaceted female characters in Canadian fiction. This epic novel was the winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel and the Globe and Mail Editors' Choice and Notable Book of the Year Award. Fall On Your Knees is a complex narrative about family secrets and the deeply buried events, memories and motivations behind human relationships. It was also shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award.

From the Publisher

"What a wild ride - I couldn't turn the pages fast enough," Oprah Winfrey told her viewers as she announced Fall on Your Knees as her February 2002 Book Club selection. Set largely in a Cape Breton coal mining community called New Waterford, ranging through four generations, Ann-Marie MacDonald's dark, insightful and hilarious first novel focuses on the Piper sisters and their troubled relationship with their father, James. Winner of the 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, it was a national bestseller in Canada for two years, and it has been translated into 17 languages.

At the start of the 20th century, James Piper sets fire to his dead mother's piano and heads out across Cape Breton Island to find a new place to live, eventually eloping with 13-year-old Materia Mahmoud, the daughter of wealthy, traditional Lebanese parents. And so, from early on, Ann-Marie MacDonald establishes some major themes: racial tension, isolation, passion and forbidden love, which will gradually lead to incest, death in childbirth, and even murder. At the centre of this epic story is the nature of family love, beginning with the Piper sister who depend on one another for survival. Their development as characters - beautiful Kathleen, the promising diva; saintly Mercedes; Frances, the mischievous bad girl, who tries to bear the family's burden; and disabled Lily, everyone's favourite - forms the heart of the novel. And then there is James, their flawed father.

Moving from Cape Breton Island to the battlefields of World War I, to Harlem in New York's Jazz Age and the Depression, the tense and enthralling plot of Fall on Your Knees contains love, pain, death, joy, and triumph. The structure of the narrative is multi-faceted, richly layered, and shifts back and forth through time as it approaches the story from different angles, "giving it a mythic quality that allows dark, half buried secrets to be gracefully and chillingly revealed" (The New York Times Book Review). As the details of the labyrinthine plot are pulled together, the question of whether it is possible to escape one's family history gradually raises itself.

The book's epigraph, taken from Wuthering Heights, seems appropriate to a novel concerned with the different, often violent, forms that love can take. On the inexorable journey towards tragedy we encounter dark yet vivid images of neglect and violence, yet the novel radiates an unquenchable life-force, and yet the novel radiates an unquenchable life-force, shimmering with emotional depth, sensual with virtuoso descriptions of the power of music. It is a saga haunted by ghosts and saints, religious fanaticism and magic. MacDonald gives the most ordinary lives extraordinarily dramatic dimensions.

The Sunday Times wrote, "It is the unpredictability of this huge book that is its greatest joy." With allusions ranging from Hollywood stars to religious tracts, Fall on Your Knees simmers with vibrancy and crackling, effervescent, breathtaking language.

About the Author

Ann-Marie MacDonald was born in West Germany and spent the first few years of her life on a Canadian air force station near Baden Baden. Her father was an officer in the RCAF and the family was posted numerous times.

She attended one year at Carleton University, Ottawa, studying languages and Classics. She went to the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal where she trained as an actor, graduating from the program in 1980. She moved to Toronto where she began an acting career. She soon became involved in creating original Canadian work in a number of contexts: collective creation, collaboration and solo writing. The work always combined theatrical innovation, politics and entertainment. She worked as an independent artist, with Nightwood Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille as her principal theatre "homes." Her seminal works include the collective creation This is For You, Anna, and the multi-episodic Nancy Drew: Clue in the Fast Lane. Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) was MacDonald's first solo-authored work.

She continued to work as an actor in theatres across the country and in many independent films, including I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, Where the Spirit Lives and Better Than Chocolate. As well, she guest-starred on numerous television series, most recently Made in Canada. MacDonald was last on stage in the spring of 2001 when she starred in a sold-out production of Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto. Currently, MacDonald is host of the CBC series Life and Times.

Her more recent work for theatre includes the play The Arab's Mouth, the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel, the collectively created The Attic, The Pearls and Three Fine Girls in which she also performed, and, most recently, the book and lyrics for the musical comedy Anything That Moves.

MacDonald's work as an actor and writer has been honoured with a number of awards, including the Governor General's Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Canadian Authors' Association Award, the Dartmouth Award, the Gemini Award, the Chalmers Award and the Dora Mavor Moore Award.

Fall on Your Knees was MacDonald's first novel and is available from Vintage Canada. She lives in Toronto with her partner, her daughter and two dogs.

Bookclub Guide

1. A cedar box, a diary, a green dress, a scarecrow - examine MacDonald''s use of repeated imagery in her exploration of family history. Are her interpretations of memory intended to be naturalistic? How does this square with her use of the spiritual life in this novel? What, for example, does Ambrose ''mean'' to Lily and Francis, and why does Pete haunt Kathleen?

2. Examine your sympathies with the family members of this book. Does the author manipulate or confuse the alliances of the reader? How does she handle revelation? Try to define the way in which the narrator relates to the reader. The internal logic of the book is also defined by the ways in which the characters ''decide'' to interpret each others'' behaviour - are you surprised by the shifts in allegiance throughout the book - where does the force for these changes come from?

3. ''That night, the Virgin Mary tells her what to do.'' (p.561) Could you have predicted the course of Mercedes'' life? What do you take MacDonald to mean in her use of religion to shape Mercedes, and what do you understand about Mercedes from the ways in which she chooses to respond to events? How closely do the sisters mirror each others'' behaviour?

4. ''The knowledge that it is to be a coloured child is most useful in determining its future. First of all, there is now no question of keeping it. Illegitimacy is a terrible but invisible blot, whereas miscegenation cannot be concealed.'' (p.393) The book addresses several major themes of conflict in the 20th Century - racial strife and inequality, sexuality, religious oppression and belief, poverty. Is MacDonald successful in her integration of such powerful topics into this intimate family history? What methods does she use to sustain the pace of the narrative throughout the 560-odd pages of the book? Some of the revelations of the character make for uncomfortable reading - is the author consciously trying to alienate the reader, shock them? If so, is she successful, and why do you think she adopted this approach?

5. ''Frances''s eyes burst open. She had a dream about Trixie just now.'' (p.373) As a plot device, what function does Trixie serve?

6. Frances manifests a particularly brittle variety of humour and resilience. Compare her responses to ''damage'' with those of her sisters, mother and father. What do you consider Frances''s principal motivations to be, and to what use has the author put these, in her construction of this book? What do you consider the author intends us to understand from her use of illness and affliction in this book?

7. How do you interpret the ''visions'' and ''intuition'' of the sisters towards each other? What do you consider MacDonald is interested in exploring by this added dimension to the story? Do you think our understanding of the personal histories is intended to change our perception of the ''public'' record of War history in Fall On Your Knees? Which characters constitute the most obvious links between the private and public?

8. ''The cave mind has entered into a creative collaboration with the voluntary mind, and soon the two of them will cocoon memory in a spinning wealth of dreams and yarns and fingerpaintings.'' (p.151) Memory and its reinvention are central to the sisters'' survival techniques in the book; how does the structure of the book assist in our understanding of this?

9. Do the histories, for example, of prohibition, or the miners strikes, serve as functional plot devices or as a metaphor?

10. How precisely imagined is this book? How important is this in the revelation of plot? Consider the book in relation to linear time. How much is this book about Kathleen''s history, and how does our understanding of the circumstances of her life reflect on our reading of other characters?

11. Compare the symbolism of this book with the magic realism of Rushdie or Márquez. How does your understanding of ''magic realism'' inform your reading of this work, if at all?

12. Consider the roles of Mrs. and Ralph Luvovitz, Leo Taylor, Theresa, Hector and Adelaide, and what light their interior life sheds on that of the Pipers. How does Frances compare with Theresa? Attempt to describe the relationship between the two. Which characters do you consider to be least successful in the story?

13. What do you take the meaning of the title of the book to be? How do the chapter headings, along with the quotes and passages that preface each section of the book serve to enhance your reading?

14. ''Frances has recently revealed a natural talent in the kitchen. She cooks and cooks. Roasts and curries, stews and casseroles. It''s mystifying. Frances is like one of those strange persons who awake one morning and play the complete works of Bach with never a lesson.'' (p.429) Discuss the roles of books, clothes, music and food in Fall On Your Knees. How many central themes are explored using these symbols?

15. Do you think that the ''real'' aspects of the novel - MacDonald''s powerful evocation of the trenches, for example - change the way in which we view the fictional lives she explores? Does the juxtaposition of ''known'' history give more weight to the author''s intent?

Edition Details

Oprah's Book Club No. 45

Trade Paperback

576 Pages, 5.1 x 7.95 x 1.15 IN

December 6, 1998

Knopf Canada

English


0394281780
9780394281780

Related Lists

From Community

From the Critics

"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

< close and return to chapters.indigo.ca
kobo
  • Take your library with you wherever you go
  • Use the device you want to use… smartphone, desktop and many of today’s most popular eReaders
  • Use Indigo gift cards to buy eBooks and subscriptions

WHY KOBO?

We love the Kobo eReading service… and we know you will too. We’ve partnered with them to bring you the most flexible, enjoyable eReading experience in Canada.

SHOPPING ON KOBO

You’ll be asked to sign in or create a new account with Kobo. Once you do, you’ll immediately get access to millions of titles and be ready to start eReading. Anytime. Anyplace.

continue to kobo

quick links

 
 
 

Sign up for email

Be the first to know

about discounts, promotions and new releases.

Sign up now 

Self Publish

Get your book published

and on our shelves!

Find out how  

Protected by Copyright. All Rights Reserved. Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Policy  

Portions of content provided by Rovi Corporation © 2010

Powered by EndecaVeriSign SecuredEssential Accessibility 

As Canada’s purveyor of ideas and inspiration, Indigo is the largest book, gift and specialty toy retailer in Canada. Indigo operates in all provinces under different banners including Indigo Books & Music; Indigo Books, Gifts, Kids; IndigoSpirit; Chapters; The World's Biggest Bookstore; and Coles. The online channel, www.indigo.ca, features books, eBooks, toys and gifts and hosts the award winning Indigo Online Community.

111