fall on your knees

i finished reading fall on your knees by ann marie macdonald today. i have to say, it was very enjoyable to read. the writing style was excellent and the story and characters were engaging.

the novel is set on cape breton island during the early part of the 20th century and revolves around the piper family, particularly the four piper sisters, kathleen, mercedes, frances, and lily. the subject matter is often disturbing--like when three or four year old frances tries to baptize baby ambrose in the creek behind the house for example... but it gets worse. there are also moments of hilarity and joy, though. so it kind of balances out a little. the scales still tip a little too much to the disturbing side for me.

the first thing i noticed about the novel was it's descriptions of cape breton island. both times i've been to cape breton, i've found the place very charming and its people wonderful and colourful. but i've also found it very barren. as in, empty or sparsely populated. in fall on your knees cape breton is thriving. there are people everywhere. sydney is a small city that easily matches halifax (no one goes to halifax--especially not after 1917). busy little mining towns pop up all over the island almost overnight. the people are poor and live on a low income, but there are lots of them and some of them do quite well, like the jewish family that owns a delicatessen, or the lebanese family that owns a general store kind of thing that, towards the end of the novel, has grown into a chain of stores with offices and warehouses all over the province. james makes a very decent living as a bootlegger and a boot maker (funny, eh?). jameel mahmoud makes a decent, though desperate living operating a speakeasy during the prohibition era. almost everyone else works in the coal mines. i liked that the novel was well populated. it paints a rich landscape of the culture and economy of cape breton in the first half of the twentieth century.

i'll paraphrase one of my favourite thoughts in the novel: the cape bretonners are discussing the economic situation of the 1930s, saying that the great depression hasn't hit cape Breton quite so hard. someone else remarks that it's because for cape breton the great depression began in 1867, with confederation. and, at least in the novel, it's true.

it's not a novel i would freely recommend. it gets creepy and it gets horrifyingly disturbing ... like when you find out who lily's parents really are and what mercedes really saw the day before her mother's death.