![]() ![]() MacDonald's greatest talent lies in characterisation. Her main focus is on the childhood of the Piper sisters, and her extraordinary insight into the magic world of childhood is just one feature which makes this novel so compelling. MacDonald's real theme, however, is the nature of family love. So from the opening pages of the novel MacDonald establishes some of the major themes - class conflict, racism, and isolation. Their childish love rouses the angst of Materia's father, and to escape his anger they elope. ![]() The story begins on Cape Breton Island where we meet James Piper, a poor piano tuner of Gaelic origin, and Materia Mahmoud, the daughter of wealthy and well-respected Lebanese parents. This is quite an achievement for a first-time novelist. Fall on Your Knees can best be described as an epic: it details the lives, and particularly the childhoods, of the four sisters it moves in place from Cape Breton Island (a remote region of Nova Scotia) to New York, and in time from pre World War One to the Jazz Age and the depression and it contains love, pain, death, joy, and triumph in varying degrees. So assured is the style, so intricate the plotting, and so accomplished the portrait of the four unforgettable Piper sisters, one would expect that the author was a seasoned novelist. It is astonishing that Fall on Your Knees by Canadian writer Ann-Marie MacDonald is her debut novel. ![]() " MacDonald accurately portrays the way children think, leaving us wondering at her insight, and gasping at the recognition of ourselves in the Piper children. ![]()
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