What's a girl to do with a day off that she's too sick to enjoy? Blog, of course.
I will endeavour to keep these reflections on Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees coherent in spite of the two days' worth of decongestants, plugged ears and periodic sneezing and wheezing.
In the last two years, I have come to detest modern tragedies. I am talking about the drivel generally found on Oprah's book lists: hard-core dramas full of barely likeable characters where circumstance, not choice, is the order of the day: think Million Little Pieces meets White Oleander. It was with grim hesitation I picked up Fall on Your Knees at a recent book-swap party. It had received a dozen respectable accolades and the jacket's promise of a jazz-era story lured me. However, once I had read the first hundred pages, I could foresee the same withered hopes, the same trite enabling, pity, guilt and curses only parents could wield upon their own children. I expected to put it down out of sheer boredom. But I didn't.
This book is written more like a poem than a novel. Sentences are short and sometimes choppy. MacDonald plays with memories and re-creates scenes to project characters' perceptions directly into the heads of her readers, so if we see through Frances' eyes, sometimes we do not recognize the difference between the reality and fiction within the story.
MacDonald also plays with olfactory senses without cumbersome exposition. The smell of the hidden cedar box and the memories it instantly conjures is expressed in a five word sentence; the disgusting taste of stuffed cod heads, contrasted with memories of tabbouleh or the horrific snip snip of steak and kidney pie is pungently concise. The sensory overload I enjoy about poetry keeps me engaged in the novel.
The changing perspective swirls memories, prejudices, anxieties in a constantly evolving and fresh way that is sorely lacking in books like
White Oleander, which allows the reader to gradually uncover the story. I feel as if my veins conduct the electricity that emanates from the characters, and I am electrified over and over. With each sentence, I yearn for the thrill of MacDonald's language.
In contrast to the language in which they are encased, the characters are not all that interesting, despite the tangibility of their feelings. I am not reading the book to find out what happens to them, which I think is an obvious drawback. They grow up in a circumstance of frustrated and stunted success for women in North America, a baggage I know continues to beat up generations to come. James' character is stalwart but generally flat and it was predictable that Frances would be the woman to sell herself. Boooooring. I find myself asking, "why is the end tragedy of a woman always the selling of herself?" I am tired of the oppression, selling, sex and shame cycle that plagues women in this genre. In fact, I would argue that I have become desensitized to its overuse by authors and that it is an impediment to my ability to relate to the character, rather than an effective force of empathy or realism. Why are these antiquated terms of honour still salient in the modern novel, supposedly being largely consumed and tolerated by a predominantly female readership?
I have a third of the book to finish. Despite its flaws, I look forward to being transported to the end by its crisp and poetic language.
