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This is probably the most screwed up book I’ve read in awhile, which means I loved it. Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald follows the story of the Piper family through three generations that are plagued by incest, attempted murder, accidental death, suicide, and a host of other sad story lines.

James Piper is introduced as a young boy left orphaned after his father disappeared and his mother died. He sets out on his own to become a piano tuner in the large city to the south on Cape Breton Island. He soon falls in love with a young daughter of a client, a much too young daughter. They quickly elope and are exiled by his new wife, Materia’s family. Set in the early 1900’s the family grows through the first World War where James enlists to avoid the feelings he suddenly has for his oldest daughter Kathleen, prohibition where James becomes a bootlegger, and the Great Depression when all of Cape Breton is angry with the Piper’s and how they survive.

MacDonald does a fabulous job alternating between making you feel bad for James as he tries everything he can to avoid his incestuous temptation, finally sending Kathleen to NYC to train with a professional voice coach, and wanting to just throttle him, because he is afterall, a pedophile producing daughter after daughter.

The daughters steal the show in Fall On Your Knees, starting with Kathleen who falls in love with a colored woman in NYC, Mercedes who denies everything going on around her, Frances who sees everything (and gets herself expelled by taking the young boy that plans on becoming a priest out behind the school yard and giving him a hand job against his will), and finally Lily, James’ consolation prize.

As always, I love the historical aspects that are thrown in, my favorite in Fall On Your Knees being the dolls the girls play with: Diphtheria Rose, Spanish Influenza, Scarlet Fever, Typhoid and TB Ahoy, Small Pox, and Cholera La France.

Fall On Your Knees has the perfect combination of great writing, strong characters, and fascinating psychological anomalies that you hope don’t appear in your own family anytime soon.

Fall On Your Knees

Novel Whore Rating: 5 Notches on the Bed Post

Wine Pairing: Hugh Hamilton The Rascal Shiraz 2006

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