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 ...
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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 onYour 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. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Seller's Description:
New. First Edition. Hardback. Dust Jacket. 8vo. Signed presentation from the author: June 16, 1997/ For Anthony/ I know you can/ eat the whole thing, / with respect and admiration/ ga-ga/ A M Macdonald. ' From the library of the late film director Anthony Minghella whose Hampstead library we bought in December 2008. ISBN: 0-394-28159-4 Pages: 566 Fine in fine dust wrapper.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good+ in Very Good dust jacket. 0394281594. Light wear to extremities, bottom fore corner of DJ chipped; DJ in Mylar, unclipped. A bright solid, book. This is the full size first edition, not the smaller reprint.; Large 8vo 9"-10" tall; 566 pages; Set largely in a Cape Breton coal mining community called New Waterford, ranging through four generations, Ann-Marie MacDonald's first novel focuses on the Piper sisters and their troubled relationship with their father, James. 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...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.
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Seller's Description:
Very good in very good dust jacket. Signed by author. Hardcover in dust jacket. Signed and inscribed by Author on title page; 5th printing. Near Fine/Near Fine
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Seller's Description:
Fine. Text block, wraps and binding are in like new condition, without markings of any kind. Well packaged and promptly shipped from California. Partnered with Friends of the Library since 2010.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good in Very Good+, Not Price Clipped jacket. Book First edition stated on verso of title page; some edge wear to boards; otherwise a solid, clean copy in collectable condition; dust jacket is protected by a Brodart sleeve.
This is the book I wish I could claim to have written. It is a true jackanory-story, which is threaded all the way through with love, humour, intrigue, deception, sadness, hope and glory. But the reader is aware of something dark and sinister hovering uncomfortably between the lines. The characters are life-like, believable and your heart will be wrenched by their histories.
I loved this book so-much-so that I searched for another written by the same author; THE WAY THE CROW FLIES... I was not dissappointed!!
Joyce W
Aug 12, 2010
Great experience. Book exactly as described and promptly shipped.
