FALL ON YOUR KNEES

Ann-Marie MacDonald's family saga, set on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island and published in 1996, is enjoying a deserved renaissance since being stamped with the Oprah symbol. It's an unforgettable novel that deserves more than one reading, and this recording is an enjoyable way to revisit it. But the abridgment, while fine as these things go, cuts out so much of the novel's intricacy that it won't do for a reader's first foray into MacDonald's world. Nikki James has to contend with sprinklings of Gaelic and Lebanese, but other than a few cloying voices (always children or men) and her inability to correctly pronounce blancmange, she's comfortable with the text. It's just too bad there isn't more of it. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/SEP 02]