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Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Fall on your knees



The A-Z Wednesday Challenge has rolled 'round once again and we're now up to the letter F. What a dilemma! I had so many choices, old and new: Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Janet Evanovich's newest Stephanie Plum novel, Finger Lickin' Fifteen, as well as Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, one of my favourite novels. If I wanted to turn to cookbooks once more, two of my favourite Canadian cookbooks are Edna Staebler's Food That Really Schmecks and Kay Spicer's From Mom: With Love. But in the end, I just had to go with Ann-Marie Macdonald's Fall on Your Knees.

Truth be told, I'd rather advise you to read The Way the Crow Flies, also written by Macdonald and one of my absolute favourite books of all time. But we have a lot of weeks to go before we get to W and I just couldn't wait. So, please, head to your local library and get yourself a copy of both books.

Fall on Your Knees is one of those novels both profound and a humdinger of a page-turner. The Chicago Tribune wrote, "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." Perfectly put.

This is the story of the confused and troubled James Piper, who marries the 13-year-old daughter of a wealthy Lebanese family at the start of the 20th century, and the daughters they have. The Piper sisters are the heart of the novel, a group of young women whose lives follow wildly different paths as the novel progresses. The book takes you from Cape Breton to Harlem during the Jazz Age and touches on issues as diverse as racial tension, religion, family secrets, incest and murder. This book will captivate you; every page offers new suspense, another surprise. Trust me...you won't want to put it down.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It sounds really good!
I'm adding it my TBR list!
Thanks for playing!!

Kristen said...

I'm pretty certain this is the book of hers that I read many, many years ago when it first came out. I did like it but honestly don't remember terribly much beyond that.

Irene said...

Oh my God Lennie yet another choice I must add to my list. BTW steal away my list, I have so many book related things going on right now that I needed to keep track of stuff. I had wanted really to put it into a widget book case, but... my time on the computer these days is limited, I'm desperately trying to clean, I am officially a desperate housewife. I can see the murder and infidelity in my future.

Leslie Jane Moran said...

The Way the Crow Flies is also one of my absolute favourites. I have not read Fall On Your Knees, but I think it's in my bookcase :) I will get it out upon your recommendation.

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