About
the Author
Ann-Marie MacDonald is a Toronto-based writer and actor.
Her play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)
won the Governor General's Award for Drama, the Chalmers
Award for Outstanding Play and the Canadian Authors'
Association Award for Drama. She won a Gemini Award
for her role in the film Where the Spirit Lives
and was nominated for a Genie for her role in I've Heard
the Mermaids Singing. Fall On Your Knees was
published in the New Face of Fiction program in 1996.
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Books by
this author
The
Way the Crow Flies (Vintage Canada, 2004)
The
Way the Crow Flies (Knopf Canada, 2003)
Goodnight
Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (Vintage
Canada, 1998)
Fall
On Your Knees (Vintage
Canada, 1997 — "Oprah's Book Club"
selection #45, February 2002)
Fall
On Your Knees (Knopf
Canada, 1996)
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Literary
Awards
- Nominated
for the Giller Prize 2003 (The Way the Crow Flies)
- Winner
of Governor General's Award for Drama (Goodnight
Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet))
- Winner
of the Chalmers Award for Outstanding Play (Goodnight
Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)
- Winner
of the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Drama
(Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet))
- Winner
of the 1997 Commonwealth Prize for Best First Fiction
(Fall On Your Knees)
- Winner
of the 1997 CAA Harlequin Literary Award for Fiction
(Fall On Your Knees)
- Winner
of the 1997 Dartmouth Book Award (Fall On Your
Knees)
- Shortlisted
for the 1996 Giller Prize (Fall On Your Knees)
- Shortlisted
for the 1997 Trillium Award (Fall On Your Knees)
- Shortlisted
for the 1997 Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel
Award (Fall On Your Knees)
- Shortlisted
for Britain's Orange Prize for Best Novel by a woman
writer (Fall On Your Knees)
- Shortlisted
for The 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
(Fall On Your Knees)
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Book Reviews and Quotes
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet): "Imagine
a collaboration among Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and
Woody Allen, and you have the essence of Goodnight
Desdemona."
—The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet): "Clever,
pointed and entertaining.... This play is one of the
wildest and woolliest feminist appraisals that theatre
has seen, and one of the most intellectually ambitious."
—The Globe and Mail
Fall On Your Knees: "Brilliantly-crafted...Profoundly
and refreshingly different...Fall on Your Knees
is about family secrets, the deeply buried events, memories
and motivations that make human relations an almost
impenetrable mystery. MacDonald has constructed a plot
worthy of Victor Hugo, a novel that is like peeling
an onion (not without tears) in its teasing revelation
of truth...A standout."
—Vancouver Sun
Fall On Your Knees: "Ann-Marie MacDonald
-- one of Canada's most talented actors and playwrights
-- has provided us with yet another aspect of a talent
that has no limits."
—Timothy Findley
Fall On Your Knees: "From award-winning
Canadian actress and playwright MacDonald comes a
full-bodied, ever-rolling debut, the story of a talented
Cape Breton family with more than its share of repression
and tragedy. ... A plate piled dangerously high with
calamities perhaps, but the time, place and people
- especially the children - all ring clear and true,
making for an accomplished considerably affecting
saga."
—Kirkus Reviews,
January 15th 1997
Fall On Your Knees: "The uniqueness of MacDonald's
voice, and of her approach, lies in her ability to distill...
She can capture, deftly, the fleeting moment, the fragmented
feelings that make up so much of what we term 'understanding'.
Thus, complex experiences become single, vivid images.
It is a rare talent that can produce it for others to
see."
—The London Times
The Way the Crow Flies: "... [is] a mesmerizing
recreation of a vanished era and a lost childhood. ... [MacDonald’s] depiction
of a vulnerable girl almost destroyed by the confluence of global politics and
local murder is rendered with beauty and passion."
—Maclean’s
The Way the Crow Flies: "A little girl’s body, lying
in a field, is the first image in this absorbing, psychologically rich second
novel by the Canadian bestselling author of Fall On Your Knees. …MacDonald
is an expert storyteller, providing an intricate recreation of life on a military
base in the 1960s…a chronicle
of innocence betrayed…The finale comes as a thunderclap, rearranging the
reader’s vision of everything that has gone before. It’s a powerful
story, delicately layered with complex secrets, told with a masterful command
of narrative and a strong moral message."
—PW Daily starred
review
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Links
to Extra Resources
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