Review of Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald

My book club (the virtual one I run) reads a variety of books. Someone had suggested Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald because they had heard about it via Oprah's Book Club. I was extremely excited to read this book, because I love books with diverse backgrounds. The book did not disappoint. I'm so happy we read it. I'm even happier I got to discuss the book with friends. I would have given this book 5 stars if it weren't for the heavy plot. This is a brilliant novel. It's extremely well written. See my full review below:

Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fall on Your Knees is a heavy drama that explores friendship, racial tension, varying religious views, isolation, domestic abuse, and forbidden love in a brilliantly crafted complex plot that includes incest, death and murder.

The plot follows the Piper family; a father, James Piper, and four children, Kathleen, Frances, Lily and Mercedes, from before World War I, through the roaring 20s, and the great depression. The four sisters gradually grow from children into fully developed characters with different personalities and their own individual stories. Each sister's story is filled with intrigue and dark secrets which are gradually revealed. Their stories all weave together in an extremely unsettling way. Ann-Marie MacDonald combines rapid mixing of tenses and points-of-view using combinations of journal, memory, dialogue and narrative. This can sometimes lead to confusion, but it ultimately allows the offer to tell the story from multiple vantage points, gradually revealing more clues as the same scene takes place from a subsequent view-point. The depth of the characters draws you into their lives and the cleverly written and sublime metaphorical words put you straight in their heads.

View all my reviews