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Fall
Award-winning author Colin McAdam’s second novel takes place at St. Ebury, an elite Ottawa boarding school. It’s a place of privilege and hollow rules, of newly minted “traditions” and the barely restrained animal instincts of the boys. A handful of girls are also in attendance, among them Fall, a beautiful and elusive figure who becomes the object of fascination for many of the male students, including Noel, a smart, intensely idiosyncratic young man. But Fall ends up dating his roommate Julius, the charismatic son of the American ambassador, whom Noel also fixates upon. Amidst a heady mix of hormones and delusional impulses, Noel gradually loses control of his obsessions.
Told from the very different perspectives of Julius and Noel, Fall is a psychologically acute and relentless literary thriller of the first order.
Told from the very different perspectives of Julius and Noel, Fall is a psychologically acute and relentless literary thriller of the first order.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
7 people are currently reading
618 people want to read
About the author
Colin McAdam
13 books50 followersColin McAdam was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Denmark, England and Barbados, as well as in several cities in Canada. He studied English and Classics at McGill University and the University of Toronto, and received his PhD in English Literature from Cambridge University in England.
He has written for Harper's Magazine and The Walrus. He lives in Montreal and has a son named Charlie who lives in Australia.
His first novel SOME GREAT THING won the Books in Canada / Amazon.ca First Novel Award and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best First Book), and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the UK.
His second novel FALL was published in 2009
He has written for Harper's Magazine and The Walrus. He lives in Montreal and has a son named Charlie who lives in Australia.
His first novel SOME GREAT THING won the Books in Canada / Amazon.ca First Novel Award and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best First Book), and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the UK.
His second novel FALL was published in 2009
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 102 reviews
April 24, 2009
I got an advanced review copy of this from goodreads.com. It's ostensibly a boarding school story. Rich, popular & privileged Julius is dating Fall (short for Fallon) the prettiest girl in the boarding school. Noel, a misfit with violent tendencies, becomes his roommate & is thrilled to be accepted into the inner circle & more & more obsessed with Fall. When Fall disappears, the true nature of these relationships and people are revealed.
On a deeper level this book is an exploration of narrative voice & of how narrative voice shapes story & what we ultimately can & cannot know about it & about others.
Julius' voice is handled conversationally. He appears to us through snippets of dialogue between himself & others & between himself & himself. There's nothing earth-shattering about Julius. He's your basic 17-year-old boy - in love for the first time, experiencing sex for the first time, trying to find out what life is all about. He's not Holden Caulfield - preternaturally intellectual & self-aware - he's something much simpler & much more real.
Noel writes from the perspective of a 30-year-old looking back on events. His parts of the story are much more a complete & polished narrative. Noel is also a sociopath, as we discover throughout the course of the novel, & his reflections communicate that sense of close observation, of taking mental notes on how others act & react so as to perform the role of human being with realism.
In the end, Fall is a cipher. She is given no voice of her own & exists only in the ways she is observed & discussed by Julius & Noel. She mirrors our experience of the beautiful young girl who disappears & is probably murdered - reported on endlessly, discussed around water coolers, & always little more than a set of pictures on the news.
I liked this book. Colin McAdams can write. There are ways in which this is perhaps more of a writing exercise than a novel with a compelling story, but for me the writing was pleasurable in & of itself & now I'm curious to go back & read his first book.
On a deeper level this book is an exploration of narrative voice & of how narrative voice shapes story & what we ultimately can & cannot know about it & about others.
Julius' voice is handled conversationally. He appears to us through snippets of dialogue between himself & others & between himself & himself. There's nothing earth-shattering about Julius. He's your basic 17-year-old boy - in love for the first time, experiencing sex for the first time, trying to find out what life is all about. He's not Holden Caulfield - preternaturally intellectual & self-aware - he's something much simpler & much more real.
Noel writes from the perspective of a 30-year-old looking back on events. His parts of the story are much more a complete & polished narrative. Noel is also a sociopath, as we discover throughout the course of the novel, & his reflections communicate that sense of close observation, of taking mental notes on how others act & react so as to perform the role of human being with realism.
In the end, Fall is a cipher. She is given no voice of her own & exists only in the ways she is observed & discussed by Julius & Noel. She mirrors our experience of the beautiful young girl who disappears & is probably murdered - reported on endlessly, discussed around water coolers, & always little more than a set of pictures on the news.
I liked this book. Colin McAdams can write. There are ways in which this is perhaps more of a writing exercise than a novel with a compelling story, but for me the writing was pleasurable in & of itself & now I'm curious to go back & read his first book.
August 22, 2015
In Grade 11 English we read
A Separate Peace
, by John Knowles, as our Novel, and I hated it. Now, I know that hating the assigned reading is a time-honoured tradition in English class, but you have to understand that this was my first experience with such an emotion. I was the book-addicted, scholarly, high-achieving nerdy student who, in Grade 10, had gotten together with friends and their English teacher at lunch to read Shakespeare (and then after our school closed at the end of Grade 10, continued to meet up outside of school over the following year). I had never not enjoyed the assigned reading before; I, with all the plucky naivety of someone who looked up to teachers and already wanted to be one, assumed that if the teacher chose it, it must be good.
Oh, how much I had left to learn.
Now, full disclosure: the aforementioned school closure and move to a new school took its toll on me and my peers, and my way of coping with it was to be somewhat of a jerk to my Grade 11 English teacher. I took it into my head that I wasn’t being “challenged” enough and me sure she knew that I wasn’t happy that this year’s Shakespeare selection would be The Taming of the Shrew (even though it’s actually an all right play to study, and later that year I went to see a neat theatre-in-the-round version). This was one of the few times as a student that I was not-pleasant to a teacher, and I regret that.
So it’s hard to say how much my displeasure over being forced to discuss and analyze A Separate Peace was caused by the book and how much came from simply being resolved not to enjoy this English class. But ever since then, I’ve had a complicated relationship with books about private boarding schools. I file them away into a mental folder in which the “boarding” has been crossed out with “boring,” and only John Irving or Robertson Davies can usually manage to break out of the cabinet at night to haunt me with dreams of tattooed wrestlers, bears, and snowballs inducing labour.
Fall reminded me a lot of A Separate Peace—or, to be more accurate, since I don’t remember the book at all, it reminded me of my memory of an idea of A Separate Peace. Colin McAdam creates a fictional Canadian private school and follows two boys, roommates, eighteen years old and thus men, really, as they orbit the eponymous girl who is the object of their affections.
I cringe as I write that last clause—a subordinate clause, even—because I’m sad that a book about two dudes moping over a woman still managed to get shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2009. Have we not moved on from such pubescent writing? Apparently not. Fall is every bit an object in this book, denied both voice and agency, forced to exist simultaneously in the fantasies of these two young men as well as a character who serves only as a sexual mirror for one and a fixation for the other. And everything about this plot is so earnest. It’s as if McAdam thinks he’s on to something big, like no one else in the history of the Western world has thought to write about teenage boys discovering sex and love and obsession in this way before. There’s not even a hint of self-deprecating self-awareness here, just the pure and honest pain of it—and yes, it’s well done in that CanLit sort of way. But my point is that Fall takes itself way too seriously about two decades too late. If it had decided to subvert itself at any point, maybe it could have had a chance.
Instead we have Noel, called Wink because of his lazy eye in that painful way boys have of giving out cutting nicknames. Noel is withdrawn, introverted and intellectual and actually getting something out of this fancy education his diplomat father is paying for. Rooming with Julius, the most popular of the seniors at St. Ebury’s, Noel falls for Fall, Julius’ girlfriend. At first we’re supposed to see this as the kind of unrequited pining of someone for his friend’s girl, but soon McAdam shows that there is a darker undercurrent to Noel, one that culminates in tragedy for all involved.
If Noel is unplumbed depths, then Julius is tapped out shallows. I suppose the stream of consciousness narration of his chapters is supposed to emphasize this: Julius is all surface, no depth. I’ll be honest: the stream of consciousness didn’t do much for me; it’s an effective narrative device, but I don’t like it.
The fact that this is a Canadian private school is mildly interesting. Unless you go to one, or know someone who does, you probably don’t think much about private schools in Canada. They seem like a foreign thing. Indeed, St. Ebury’s and its real-life counterparts are the domain of the old moneyed types, Canadian or diplomatic as depicted here, who still cling to the boarding-and-starched-uniform visions, complete with “masters” and complicated disciplinary codes. It’s interesting to be reminded that this is still a thing.
McAdam points out the hypocrisy of those places, the tension between the cost of providing such an education and the way the straitjacket of rules infantilizes these adult boys. This is a legitimate criticism. But it’s also a little beside the point, given what Noel ends up doing.
The inevitability of Noel’s heel turn is fairly obvious quite early in the book. So it’s not so much a surprise as it is the fulfilment of a promise when it happens, and everything that follows is anticlimactic. There is a strange beauty to the plot as McAdam has structured it; Noel is at least semi-fascinating as a character study of a species of sociopath. We could have long, meandering conversations about unreliable narrators and suppressed memories.
But that doesn’t dispel my ultimate discomfort, which is that when you strip away all the decoration, what you have is a plot driven by a damsel in distress. Fall is not about Fall the woman but what these two men imagine Fall might be. And that is interesting psychologically, yes. But it’s been done before, and I don’t know that it’s all that necessary for us to keep retreading the issue from this privileged perspective of the poor damaged rich boys.
Where’s the story from Fall’s perspective? Why can’t we learn about who she is, rather than who Julius and Noel tell us she is? Why can’t we hear her thoughts on whether Julius is a bore (but great in bed) and how Noel is sweet but also a little creepy, and how she loves her mom but is afraid she’ll never get a streak of independence? Of all the poorly-sketched characters in this book, Fall definitely seems like the most lively, most interesting, deepest of them all. Shame we never meet her.
I’d love to see Fall make decisions. I’d love to see her fight back at the river instead of serving the role of prop to cement Noel’s downfall. McAdam has so many opportunities here to elevate the story rather than go through the motions.
I don’t question his skills as a writer, really. It’s a nice enough book, albeit one that is unquestionably shooting for that “literary” label. And therein lies the problem: Fall just takes itself too seriously. McAdam hopes to become great by following in the footsteps of those we consider great rather than stopping to critique the greats, to steal what works from them but question and tear down the things that don’t. The result is simply a reiteration of what has come before: there is nothing in Fall you haven’t seen elsewhere, and it’s the same ol’, same ol’ stories of men obsessing over women that male writers have been writing for a very long time.
Oh, how much I had left to learn.
Now, full disclosure: the aforementioned school closure and move to a new school took its toll on me and my peers, and my way of coping with it was to be somewhat of a jerk to my Grade 11 English teacher. I took it into my head that I wasn’t being “challenged” enough and me sure she knew that I wasn’t happy that this year’s Shakespeare selection would be The Taming of the Shrew (even though it’s actually an all right play to study, and later that year I went to see a neat theatre-in-the-round version). This was one of the few times as a student that I was not-pleasant to a teacher, and I regret that.
So it’s hard to say how much my displeasure over being forced to discuss and analyze A Separate Peace was caused by the book and how much came from simply being resolved not to enjoy this English class. But ever since then, I’ve had a complicated relationship with books about private boarding schools. I file them away into a mental folder in which the “boarding” has been crossed out with “boring,” and only John Irving or Robertson Davies can usually manage to break out of the cabinet at night to haunt me with dreams of tattooed wrestlers, bears, and snowballs inducing labour.
Fall reminded me a lot of A Separate Peace—or, to be more accurate, since I don’t remember the book at all, it reminded me of my memory of an idea of A Separate Peace. Colin McAdam creates a fictional Canadian private school and follows two boys, roommates, eighteen years old and thus men, really, as they orbit the eponymous girl who is the object of their affections.
I cringe as I write that last clause—a subordinate clause, even—because I’m sad that a book about two dudes moping over a woman still managed to get shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2009. Have we not moved on from such pubescent writing? Apparently not. Fall is every bit an object in this book, denied both voice and agency, forced to exist simultaneously in the fantasies of these two young men as well as a character who serves only as a sexual mirror for one and a fixation for the other. And everything about this plot is so earnest. It’s as if McAdam thinks he’s on to something big, like no one else in the history of the Western world has thought to write about teenage boys discovering sex and love and obsession in this way before. There’s not even a hint of self-deprecating self-awareness here, just the pure and honest pain of it—and yes, it’s well done in that CanLit sort of way. But my point is that Fall takes itself way too seriously about two decades too late. If it had decided to subvert itself at any point, maybe it could have had a chance.
Instead we have Noel, called Wink because of his lazy eye in that painful way boys have of giving out cutting nicknames. Noel is withdrawn, introverted and intellectual and actually getting something out of this fancy education his diplomat father is paying for. Rooming with Julius, the most popular of the seniors at St. Ebury’s, Noel falls for Fall, Julius’ girlfriend. At first we’re supposed to see this as the kind of unrequited pining of someone for his friend’s girl, but soon McAdam shows that there is a darker undercurrent to Noel, one that culminates in tragedy for all involved.
If Noel is unplumbed depths, then Julius is tapped out shallows. I suppose the stream of consciousness narration of his chapters is supposed to emphasize this: Julius is all surface, no depth. I’ll be honest: the stream of consciousness didn’t do much for me; it’s an effective narrative device, but I don’t like it.
The fact that this is a Canadian private school is mildly interesting. Unless you go to one, or know someone who does, you probably don’t think much about private schools in Canada. They seem like a foreign thing. Indeed, St. Ebury’s and its real-life counterparts are the domain of the old moneyed types, Canadian or diplomatic as depicted here, who still cling to the boarding-and-starched-uniform visions, complete with “masters” and complicated disciplinary codes. It’s interesting to be reminded that this is still a thing.
McAdam points out the hypocrisy of those places, the tension between the cost of providing such an education and the way the straitjacket of rules infantilizes these adult boys. This is a legitimate criticism. But it’s also a little beside the point, given what Noel ends up doing.
The inevitability of Noel’s heel turn is fairly obvious quite early in the book. So it’s not so much a surprise as it is the fulfilment of a promise when it happens, and everything that follows is anticlimactic. There is a strange beauty to the plot as McAdam has structured it; Noel is at least semi-fascinating as a character study of a species of sociopath. We could have long, meandering conversations about unreliable narrators and suppressed memories.
But that doesn’t dispel my ultimate discomfort, which is that when you strip away all the decoration, what you have is a plot driven by a damsel in distress. Fall is not about Fall the woman but what these two men imagine Fall might be. And that is interesting psychologically, yes. But it’s been done before, and I don’t know that it’s all that necessary for us to keep retreading the issue from this privileged perspective of the poor damaged rich boys.
Where’s the story from Fall’s perspective? Why can’t we learn about who she is, rather than who Julius and Noel tell us she is? Why can’t we hear her thoughts on whether Julius is a bore (but great in bed) and how Noel is sweet but also a little creepy, and how she loves her mom but is afraid she’ll never get a streak of independence? Of all the poorly-sketched characters in this book, Fall definitely seems like the most lively, most interesting, deepest of them all. Shame we never meet her.
I’d love to see Fall make decisions. I’d love to see her fight back at the river instead of serving the role of prop to cement Noel’s downfall. McAdam has so many opportunities here to elevate the story rather than go through the motions.
I don’t question his skills as a writer, really. It’s a nice enough book, albeit one that is unquestionably shooting for that “literary” label. And therein lies the problem: Fall just takes itself too seriously. McAdam hopes to become great by following in the footsteps of those we consider great rather than stopping to critique the greats, to steal what works from them but question and tear down the things that don’t. The result is simply a reiteration of what has come before: there is nothing in Fall you haven’t seen elsewhere, and it’s the same ol’, same ol’ stories of men obsessing over women that male writers have been writing for a very long time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 25, 2009
I'm a huge fan of his first novel, Some Great Thing, for many reasons--stylistic fearlessness, the visceral pulse of the narrative, the two main characters who are inverse images of each other. Fall (for which I've been waiting for six years) doesn't disappoint. Like Some Great Thing, it's extraordinary in how it adheres to yet also subverts what we think of as storytelling. And the main character, Noel, vibrates off the page with a strangely rootless rage (I'm impressed with how McAdam resists the urge to give Noel a tangible reason for acting out his inner ugliness; sometimes there is no reason and it's a brave writer who embraces that). And anyone who knows me knows that I love stories that feature teenagers! It's never easy to write about people whose emotions are running at a precariously high pitch, and McAdam does it very, very well, capturing the staccato of their dialogue and the urgency with which they feel everything. Fall, at its core, is about violence and a disappearance and the novel makes us wonder about our own thinly disguised animalism. At what point does socialization crack and we find ourselves railing against the ones we love, or the unfairness of the universe? Perhaps the story contains a few too many similarities with Some Great Thing (I couldn't help but think that Noel and Julius are adolescent versions of Simon and Jerry), in character, narrative and theme (rage, invisibility, inane social niceties), and perhaps there are passages describing Noel's inner motivations where a sharp editor might have done some cutting. But since I'm a fan of McAdam's work and not a real book critic, Fall satisfied that gaping hole in my readerly soul that was looking for something truly brain-twisting and emotionally raw. Thanks, Mr. McAdam.
January 22, 2015
Hmm, really wanted to love this book but alas it was a little too patchy and inconclusive to me..Fall (not Fall with the long A like synonym of autumn but Fall with a short A as in Fallon, a girls name) is the story of two roommates and their time in a prep school for boys. If this was the entire story, their relationship, their "boys will be boys" antics and how they grow emotionally and psychologically I would love love love this book however when the element of a girlfriend who goes missing, a totally useless narrator in his father's chauffeur and the kinda annoying and easily bypassed stream of conciousness used to tell one of the boy's feelings is introduced I feel the book falls flat. As the two roommates learn more about each other one of them reveals a slightly obsessive nature towards his roommate and his girlfriend and it is in these chapters that the book really shines as insightful and brilliantly written however there is a vague mystery after Fall goes missing that is never really fleshed out only alluded to in one of my favorite segments where the police begin to question students on the girl and her habits..in that segment the book really took on the qualities of one of my favorite psychological thrillers of all time Crime and Punishment..Overall though this book was kinda difficult to read, easy to skim through and short there is a flash of intrigue and great writing there as well as a profile of a disturbed boy that is worth reading if you have the patience..
September 25, 2009
A frighteningly good look into the mind of a sociopath. I read other reviews that talk about how this is a prep school book about love & friendships gone awry, but for me, I could see the stirrings of Noel's sociopathy early on in the book, and to me, it was the central core of the book.
The part of me that likes nice tidied up endings wishes we found out what truly happened to Fall (as well as what happened with the body builder chick in Australia), but looking back on it, Noel's segments were in his 1st person pov, and in his twisted mind he just keeps telling himself he didn't do anything and he believes it. My concern during the book was that no one would peg him--that the front he presented to us, the reader, was the front he presented to the world, and would they see what he wanted them to see, or what I saw?
And Julius' segments, written in a short & choppy almost stream of consciousness way were at first annoying to me, but ended up growing on me, just as Julius' sweet & simple ways grew on me. But I don't understand the necessity of the William pov's--am I forgetting something that was crucial to the book in his segments? I found him unnecessary.
The part of me that likes nice tidied up endings wishes we found out what truly happened to Fall (as well as what happened with the body builder chick in Australia), but looking back on it, Noel's segments were in his 1st person pov, and in his twisted mind he just keeps telling himself he didn't do anything and he believes it. My concern during the book was that no one would peg him--that the front he presented to us, the reader, was the front he presented to the world, and would they see what he wanted them to see, or what I saw?
And Julius' segments, written in a short & choppy almost stream of consciousness way were at first annoying to me, but ended up growing on me, just as Julius' sweet & simple ways grew on me. But I don't understand the necessity of the William pov's--am I forgetting something that was crucial to the book in his segments? I found him unnecessary.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 5, 2010
from quill and quire, as it about sums up my feelings exactly:
The "Fall" that provides the title to this well written novel is Fallon DeStindt, a student at an exclusive Ottawa-area boarding school who mysteriously disappears half way through the book. Two people who seem to be implicated are her boyfriend Julius, son of the American ambassador, and Julius's roommate Noel, son of Canada's Consul General to Australia (author Colin McAdam is himself the son of a diplomat and attended Ottawa's Ashbury College, so he knows the milieu).
The presentation shuttles skilfully among different points of view and makes heavy use of a stream-of-consciousness approach in the Julius sections. The immediacy of these parts suits Julius's personality, as he is an unreflective, somewhat naive bundle of hormones, living only in the moment and head-over-heels in love with Fall. Political allegory takes a turn for the psycho-sexual when our well-hung, innocent neighbour to the south meets Noel, a creepy closet case far less well-endowed who likes to lift weights and read Thomas Hobbes. Noel tells his side of the story looking back on the events from a mature perspective. Still in Ottawa, he has landed a job with the CRTC.
There's a B-movie flavour to all of this, but the writing is fresh and alert throughout, allowing McAdam to express the random poetry of perception ("words chasing thoughts") while recreating the claustrophobic atmosphere of the boarding school and its little world of boredom, privilege, and "enforced infantilization." The plot is also deftly handled, from its puzzle-without-a-solution missing center to the playful side-notes and paranoid leitmotifs. Bald men start to seem particularly sinister.
The only real negative is the amount of time spent on the heavy petting and puppy love that goes on between Julius and Fall. Young lovers are annoying enough when passed on the street; this amount of close exposure - not excluding the bumping teeth as they stare deep, deep into one another's eyes - is too much, especially given the stylistic extremes these sections go to (sex, for example, is rendered as "Phoo. Ooo. Aah. Mm. Sss. Pha. Sh. Ga. Ga. Gah." etc.). Add to this the truism that the villain in such pieces is always more interesting than the beautiful people and the love story seems that much weaker in comparison.
The "Fall" that provides the title to this well written novel is Fallon DeStindt, a student at an exclusive Ottawa-area boarding school who mysteriously disappears half way through the book. Two people who seem to be implicated are her boyfriend Julius, son of the American ambassador, and Julius's roommate Noel, son of Canada's Consul General to Australia (author Colin McAdam is himself the son of a diplomat and attended Ottawa's Ashbury College, so he knows the milieu).
The presentation shuttles skilfully among different points of view and makes heavy use of a stream-of-consciousness approach in the Julius sections. The immediacy of these parts suits Julius's personality, as he is an unreflective, somewhat naive bundle of hormones, living only in the moment and head-over-heels in love with Fall. Political allegory takes a turn for the psycho-sexual when our well-hung, innocent neighbour to the south meets Noel, a creepy closet case far less well-endowed who likes to lift weights and read Thomas Hobbes. Noel tells his side of the story looking back on the events from a mature perspective. Still in Ottawa, he has landed a job with the CRTC.
There's a B-movie flavour to all of this, but the writing is fresh and alert throughout, allowing McAdam to express the random poetry of perception ("words chasing thoughts") while recreating the claustrophobic atmosphere of the boarding school and its little world of boredom, privilege, and "enforced infantilization." The plot is also deftly handled, from its puzzle-without-a-solution missing center to the playful side-notes and paranoid leitmotifs. Bald men start to seem particularly sinister.
The only real negative is the amount of time spent on the heavy petting and puppy love that goes on between Julius and Fall. Young lovers are annoying enough when passed on the street; this amount of close exposure - not excluding the bumping teeth as they stare deep, deep into one another's eyes - is too much, especially given the stylistic extremes these sections go to (sex, for example, is rendered as "Phoo. Ooo. Aah. Mm. Sss. Pha. Sh. Ga. Ga. Gah." etc.). Add to this the truism that the villain in such pieces is always more interesting than the beautiful people and the love story seems that much weaker in comparison.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 9, 2012
"Oh no," I groaned as I started this book. "More stream-of-consciousness. What am I doing to myself?" However, in this case it works. The author has three different voices, all male, all telling some parts of the story (and sometimes giving the same incident from different points of view, which is very illuminating). The most unsettling by far is the one that is lucid, articulate, and educated - Noel, a loner at the exclusive boarding school that forms the setting for most of the incidents in the novel. As the novel progresses, Noel casually lets slip references to entirely unsettling happenings &/or thoughts in his past that lead us to conclude that he is, indeed, entirely capable of a psychopathic act - like the murder of the title female/object, Fall (short for Fallon). The most streamy stream-of-consciousness sections belong to Julian, who is about as dim and body/sex-obsessed as you'd expect an eighteen-year-old boy to be. He's Fall's boyfriend, and therefore another object of Noel's obsession; he's also Noel's roommate, and fills the most-popular-boy-in-the school role. The third voice, a relatively minor one, is that of William, a disillusioned chauffeur (Julian's father is an ambassador); William's own musings occasionally have disquieting echoes in the thoughts of the boys, but he's chiefly there to give historical perspective.
I liked the pictures of life in a quasi-traditional Canadian institution ("the place has traditions, but the traditions aren't old," says Noel. And I appreciated (though, not being an admirer of the 18-year-old male beast in general, I didn't particularly like) the very realistic sound of the boys' voices and thoughts.
I wish we could have had Fall's voice as well, but that's not what this novel is about; it's about belonging and not belonging in a closed male-dominated society (Julian also has father issues, lest we miss that particular point), and about how violence can erupt shockingly when the dangerous ones aren't properly diagnosed.
There aren't really any spoilers to protect in this plot; if there's one thing I have to complain about it's that McAdam draws us in and invests us in Fall's fate, but leaves us hanging, though with reasonably strong suspicions. It may be more true to the way life actually operates, but it's damn annoying in a novel!
Anyway, thank you, little brother, for this Christmas gift and out of the ordinary read for me.
I liked the pictures of life in a quasi-traditional Canadian institution ("the place has traditions, but the traditions aren't old," says Noel. And I appreciated (though, not being an admirer of the 18-year-old male beast in general, I didn't particularly like) the very realistic sound of the boys' voices and thoughts.
I wish we could have had Fall's voice as well, but that's not what this novel is about; it's about belonging and not belonging in a closed male-dominated society (Julian also has father issues, lest we miss that particular point), and about how violence can erupt shockingly when the dangerous ones aren't properly diagnosed.
There aren't really any spoilers to protect in this plot; if there's one thing I have to complain about it's that McAdam draws us in and invests us in Fall's fate, but leaves us hanging, though with reasonably strong suspicions. It may be more true to the way life actually operates, but it's damn annoying in a novel!
Anyway, thank you, little brother, for this Christmas gift and out of the ordinary read for me.
December 28, 2012
It's always nice to read a Canadian author, and this one has a more storied pedigree having been shortlisted for the Giller prize in 2009. This is the tale of 2 very different boys that through exegent circumstances become roommates at a highly prestigious boarding school in Ontario. One boy is handsome, popular and dating the most beautiful girl in school, while the other is a quiet loner who barely has any friends, and is secretly in love with his roommate's girlfriend. As the year progresses the two form a friendship which unfortunately leads to devastating consequences.
McAdam does a great job here with some interesting narrative choices. The story is told in alternating chapters from the two boys' perspectives, each perspective being written in very different styles - Noel, the quiet loner, is very erudite and poetic and filled with introspective thoughts, while Julius, the popular boy is simple and written in a more stream of consciousness style. His chapters are characterized by more baser instincts.
This one hits a few sweet spots - I love books set in boarding schools or prestigious colleges or universities, and secondly I love books with unreliable narrators. I couldn't help but draw comparisons to one of my favourite novels of all time, What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller which has a similar theme though from a female perspective.
If there's one failing for me it's probably but knowing that
Great book for anyone who enjoys this genre or has a fetish for boarding school books like me.
McAdam does a great job here with some interesting narrative choices. The story is told in alternating chapters from the two boys' perspectives, each perspective being written in very different styles - Noel, the quiet loner, is very erudite and poetic and filled with introspective thoughts, while Julius, the popular boy is simple and written in a more stream of consciousness style. His chapters are characterized by more baser instincts.
This one hits a few sweet spots - I love books set in boarding schools or prestigious colleges or universities, and secondly I love books with unreliable narrators. I couldn't help but draw comparisons to one of my favourite novels of all time, What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller which has a similar theme though from a female perspective.
If there's one failing for me it's probably but knowing that
Great book for anyone who enjoys this genre or has a fetish for boarding school books like me.
February 25, 2018
This book was slightly revolting. Not in an interesting way, although originally I was curious as some reviews mentioned it does a good POV . Mostly, it's kind of trite and dominated by the somewhat dull and repugnant characters whose first-person perspectives the reader is forced to endure.
Regarding Noel: See above.
Regarding Julius: My God, is anyone actually this dumb at age 18? Does anyone's mental voice actually sound like verbalized bilgewater? His stream-of-consciousness narration gave me a headache bordering on despair.
I could try to believe this book was being self-aware with the above quote, but I doubt it. There's really no point or revelation to this book. These viewpoint characters are obsessed with themselves and the titular girl, and none of the women gets the chance to have a life or articulate any motives and thoughts beyond the male narrators' petty worldviews or even a voice. If that was the point, it's not a fresh revelation. As if we need reminding that women rarely get credited with any agency at all, at any stage of life, in any part of the world.
Angrier that I hoped too long for a payoff that doesn't exist, and spent time reading this that I'll never get back.
Regarding Noel: See above.
Regarding Julius: My God, is anyone actually this dumb at age 18? Does anyone's mental voice actually sound like verbalized bilgewater? His stream-of-consciousness narration gave me a headache bordering on despair.
"I began to realize the role of a pretty girl in our society. No one attracts our solicitation as much as a pretty girl. She is a vessel of our hopes, we suggest her future, instinctively give her guidance, love to watch her, expect to watch her move through extraordinary spaces. And if something goes wrong, we instinctively imagine her as the victim, a passive player in a beautiful tragedy, a flower which was never meant to survive in our bitter soil. But what we hate to acknowledge is her volition. That a pretty girl should have agency or choice. It’s repugnant to think she could choose to do wrong."
I could try to believe this book was being self-aware with the above quote, but I doubt it. There's really no point or revelation to this book. These viewpoint characters are obsessed with themselves and the titular girl, and none of the women gets the chance to have a life or articulate any motives and thoughts beyond the male narrators' petty worldviews or even a voice. If that was the point, it's not a fresh revelation. As if we need reminding that women rarely get credited with any agency at all, at any stage of life, in any part of the world.
Angrier that I hoped too long for a payoff that doesn't exist, and spent time reading this that I'll never get back.
May 3, 2009
It sounds cliche, but author Colin McAdam had me at the first line, "Half an hour of lips and silk in the front and back and her cheeks are like peaches like peaches like peaches." I felt I didn't so much read this book as experience it, revel in it, run it through my fingers and inhale it.
One caveat--don't be swayed the synopsis on the back of the book. In that write-up, the character of Julius is described as caring only for fleeting joys--sneeking out, playing pranks with friends, and spending the night with his girlfriend, Fall." I don't think the person who wrote this actually read the book. In reality, "Fall" is the story of three prep school students and the tragic way their lives intertwine. Julius, popular, but sensitive, is paired up to room with the eerily strange Noel. As the novel progresses, we learn more and more disturbing facts about Noel and his creepy fascination with both Julius and Juluis' lovely and cool girlfriend, Fall, who later goes missing.
The book is so rich. For instance, the recurring theme of teeth is so jarring, yet subtle--it left me thinking of Ted Bundy, without being obvious about it. Telling the story from the points of view of Julius and Noel showed McAdams' skill and sharp ear for dialogue. Some of his descriptions were so gorgeous they made my skin tingle. Others were so sad and true that I actually wanted to underline them in my book. And I NEVER write in books!
These characters will haunt your dreams and the story will make you wonder what if these people had never met? What if Noel and Julius had not been roommates? What if Fall's mother had chosen a different boarding school for her? Just like in life, small choices have big consequences.
One caveat--don't be swayed the synopsis on the back of the book. In that write-up, the character of Julius is described as caring only for fleeting joys--sneeking out, playing pranks with friends, and spending the night with his girlfriend, Fall." I don't think the person who wrote this actually read the book. In reality, "Fall" is the story of three prep school students and the tragic way their lives intertwine. Julius, popular, but sensitive, is paired up to room with the eerily strange Noel. As the novel progresses, we learn more and more disturbing facts about Noel and his creepy fascination with both Julius and Juluis' lovely and cool girlfriend, Fall, who later goes missing.
The book is so rich. For instance, the recurring theme of teeth is so jarring, yet subtle--it left me thinking of Ted Bundy, without being obvious about it. Telling the story from the points of view of Julius and Noel showed McAdams' skill and sharp ear for dialogue. Some of his descriptions were so gorgeous they made my skin tingle. Others were so sad and true that I actually wanted to underline them in my book. And I NEVER write in books!
These characters will haunt your dreams and the story will make you wonder what if these people had never met? What if Noel and Julius had not been roommates? What if Fall's mother had chosen a different boarding school for her? Just like in life, small choices have big consequences.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 28, 2011
Strange as it seems, this book is not about the season of Autumn. The book is titled after one of the characters names. Fall, short for Fallon. Fall is the name of the girl that is mostly talked about in this book. Two roommates at a prep school share their stories about how their senior years are going. Julius is an athletic guy that happens to be dating the prettiest girl in school. As for Noel, he is the stereotypical intelligent one. Stereotypical as in, he’s an outsider. Both characters are pretty stereotypical. The jock gets the girl and the awkward nerd doesn’t fit in. The only problem is that Noel develops an obsession over Julius’ girlfriend, Fall. But near winter break when Fall disappears, the two of them face adulthood and need to start acting like adults.
I really enjoyed this book. I thought the author did a really good job of organizing it. it was filled with an appropriate amount of detail. Not too little to not get what the the authors saying, and not too much to bore you to death. I really like how not only one character narrated. The author switched between the two main characters. It’s fun to read two different perspectives on the same situation! The only thing the author didn’t do, was explain Fall. Unless I don’t remember, but I didn’t get a great view on Fall. I only learned about her from the two boys’ perspective, but not enough information to fully grasp the idea of her. But that doesn’t make this book one not to read.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and it reflected a lot on teenage life and problems. I would give it a 4 out of 5. McAdams did a nice job on describing teenage life being transferred into adulthood. I think this book would be best if read by guys and girls in their later teens.
I really enjoyed this book. I thought the author did a really good job of organizing it. it was filled with an appropriate amount of detail. Not too little to not get what the the authors saying, and not too much to bore you to death. I really like how not only one character narrated. The author switched between the two main characters. It’s fun to read two different perspectives on the same situation! The only thing the author didn’t do, was explain Fall. Unless I don’t remember, but I didn’t get a great view on Fall. I only learned about her from the two boys’ perspective, but not enough information to fully grasp the idea of her. But that doesn’t make this book one not to read.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and it reflected a lot on teenage life and problems. I would give it a 4 out of 5. McAdams did a nice job on describing teenage life being transferred into adulthood. I think this book would be best if read by guys and girls in their later teens.
May 9, 2016
An interesting insight into life in a private school. Noel and Julius are room mates in their senior year at an Ottawa boarding school. Noel is socially awkward after a lifetime of bullying about his lazy eye. He has bulked up over the summer with his parents in Australia in an effort to rid himself of his awkward reputation. Julius is the son of the U.S. ambassador and madly in love with Fall (Fallon). Fall is one of the few girls in residence at the school. She is lusted after by any number of other boys at the school, but none more than Noel. Circumstances keep Fall and Julius apart, and put Noel in the middle. Noel really doesn't know where to turn. He and Julius have formed a very intimate bond due to their proximity to each other in their dorm, sharing secrets and some non sexual physical intimacy. Noel has seen, or at least heard, much of Julius' relationship with Fall and wants to know some of this closeness too. Resentment builds as Noel runs the middle and then disaster strikes.
This is a world that I have difficulty relating to, having never been exposed to it. I can't say just how realistic the situations are but I do find them very plausible. That schools, such as this, can become their own little world, particularly when high ranking foreign officials are involved is very believable. Secrecy and protecting the reputation and status of diplomats and their progeny, can lead to some interesting situations and solutions. Overall an interesting read.
This is a world that I have difficulty relating to, having never been exposed to it. I can't say just how realistic the situations are but I do find them very plausible. That schools, such as this, can become their own little world, particularly when high ranking foreign officials are involved is very believable. Secrecy and protecting the reputation and status of diplomats and their progeny, can lead to some interesting situations and solutions. Overall an interesting read.
July 20, 2010
Eh. That's all I can say..."eh." The back of the book makes the story seem so promising. But I was left wanting a little more. I found the style of writing a little annoying, especially Julius's character and his A.D.D. stream of conscious. Sometimes you're just reading to read and not really paying attention because his thoughts don't link together. I know that was the point, but I found it frustrating.
I also thought that the majority of the book was spent setting up who everyone was...a lot of backstory and character building when I personally think the best books are when characters are already fully developed. There was too much time setting up for the eventual "change" in both boys that when it happens(I think it happened) you're left, again, wanting something more. I thought the best part of the book was the interrogation between a detective and Noel...the sociopath. The story started moving here and I felt you saw a different side of Noel. The story doesn't get going until Fall disappears some 200 pages into a 350+ book and I found that annoying as well. I don't know...I didn't like it. I can see why people like it and the style and everything, but I kind of wish i would have skipped this one.
I also thought that the majority of the book was spent setting up who everyone was...a lot of backstory and character building when I personally think the best books are when characters are already fully developed. There was too much time setting up for the eventual "change" in both boys that when it happens(I think it happened) you're left, again, wanting something more. I thought the best part of the book was the interrogation between a detective and Noel...the sociopath. The story started moving here and I felt you saw a different side of Noel. The story doesn't get going until Fall disappears some 200 pages into a 350+ book and I found that annoying as well. I don't know...I didn't like it. I can see why people like it and the style and everything, but I kind of wish i would have skipped this one.
February 2, 2009
I got an ARC of Fall at the ALA midwinter meeting. I originally picked it up because the back likens McAdam to Michael Ondaatje, who is, you know, my absolute favorite. But, like several remarks on the back cover, I disagree. Their writing styles are very disparate, and while McAdam's writing is good, it's not poetic the way most of Ondaatje's work is.
Furthermore, the back suggests that Julius, one of the character's whose pov we hear quite frequently, "cares only for fleeting joys", but I don't believe this is how McAdam presented him at all. In fact, after finishing Fall, I have far more empathy for Julius, who genuinely cared about Fall, Noel, and the others in his life. Noel, his sociopathic roommate, is so incredibly twisted that I can't believe anyone would portray him as being excited about being "allowed into the inner circle" because, until he is there, I can't believe who he messes with, exactly, would matter to him.
In any case, I really loved this book in it's carefully crafted, twisted way, and the different ways that McAdam writes in his characters voices is wonderfully done.
Furthermore, the back suggests that Julius, one of the character's whose pov we hear quite frequently, "cares only for fleeting joys", but I don't believe this is how McAdam presented him at all. In fact, after finishing Fall, I have far more empathy for Julius, who genuinely cared about Fall, Noel, and the others in his life. Noel, his sociopathic roommate, is so incredibly twisted that I can't believe anyone would portray him as being excited about being "allowed into the inner circle" because, until he is there, I can't believe who he messes with, exactly, would matter to him.
In any case, I really loved this book in it's carefully crafted, twisted way, and the different ways that McAdam writes in his characters voices is wonderfully done.
March 12, 2015
This is one of the worst written books I've ever read. I didn't even finish the book. Jumping between the different writing styles is confusing to understand the speaker, there's also a lot of nothing going on. I read almost the first hundred pages and literally nothing happened. All back story, no good love story, and no mystery. Both of which it claimed to be. Boring.
November 17, 2014
Found this so dull, almost gave up on it a few times, pushed through but don't know why I bothered... yawn
July 14, 2020
McAdam's Fall follows two senior males, very privileged students at a private school in Ottawa, their awkward adolescent male bonding rituals and their courtship of an attractive female student. I read this book, in small spurts, at the same time I was slogging through Maugham's Of Human Bondage without seeing the parallel until I'd finished both. Not until now did I stop trying to fit "bondage" as a synonym of slavery rather a form of the word "bonding," that Julius and Noel in the awkward snippets of their streams of consciousness attempted to find a balance between fear and pride, ritual dominance and actual dominance. While Noel reflects on his actions from some time in a future where the consequences of his actions have been realized, Julius remains a captive of his "now" throughout. While the fate of voiceless Fallon is technically left to the reader's imagination, the logic of her outcome is unmistakable and the final feather in McAdam's cap, a post modern rather than Victorian, ending.
November 13, 2022
stuck with me when I first read it almost a decade ago
I read this twice as a teenager and was captivated and disturbed and overwhelmed. I lost the memory of the name of the book and the author for years and finally was able to recount it, and upon reading this on my third run I am still captivated, disturbed, and overwhelmed. There are questions left unanswered, the book does end somewhat abrupt but reading several times allows things to simmer and come to the surface that don’t usually pop up in the initial reading. The comparison between your average 18 year old boy and an 18 year old sociopath is subtle enough that it appears innocuous at first understanding. Reading again and subtleties jump out and then scream out begging to be seen and noted. I adore this book. It will haunt me forever.
I read this twice as a teenager and was captivated and disturbed and overwhelmed. I lost the memory of the name of the book and the author for years and finally was able to recount it, and upon reading this on my third run I am still captivated, disturbed, and overwhelmed. There are questions left unanswered, the book does end somewhat abrupt but reading several times allows things to simmer and come to the surface that don’t usually pop up in the initial reading. The comparison between your average 18 year old boy and an 18 year old sociopath is subtle enough that it appears innocuous at first understanding. Reading again and subtleties jump out and then scream out begging to be seen and noted. I adore this book. It will haunt me forever.
December 22, 2025
The book is as hard to start as it jumped around to random conversations & thoughts until learning the characters then it was easier to adapt based on their personalities. I was constantly second guessing the who done it factor. I didn’t like the abrupt ending; this is why I only gave it a 3. Still really enjoyed the book though.
November 11, 2021
Quit reading it. It was a disturbing story line that just didn’t seem worth subjecting my mind to. Garbage in, garbage out. Also did not care for the jumbled, unpunctuated style of writing for Julius’s character.
June 16, 2022
Well at the end I was wanting more…. Not because I was itching to hear how the story continues but because the author just didn’t finish the book. I’m confused. I don’t like leaving a book feeling confused. The two main characters are strange but it’s kind of interesting and lots of good vocab.
April 26, 2025
Disturbing and not good to read if you want to lay back and relax reading a novel. I don't think I ever wanna go near this book ever again. Sorry but no one please don't write anything like this ever again
February 5, 2018
So that book took a direction I wasn't expecting...
November 25, 2019
I do not like being in the mind of teenagers. Even more so I do not like being in the mind of a sociopath. Both are baffling and difficult to understand.
Want to read
July 19, 2020elibrary
Read
August 27, 2020Got to pg 90 of 500 - not for me.
May 11, 2021
This book had a decent beginning, but then it went way to abstract for me. Did not finish.
May 13, 2016
Fall needs getting into. At first, the voices of the two main protagonists seem to clash. Credulity is tested. They seem too polarised. Noel and Julius share a room in a boarding school. Noel is the analyst, highly intelligent, divorced from the human condition by his lack of empathy and his tendency to logical reductionism. Julius is the poet. He, too, is intelligent but his intelligence is oriented towards people. He is popular, mischievous, living in the moment, sensually taking from life what it has to offer without analysis, simply being.
Such a dichotomy seems too convenient at first. With two narrators, unusual in any novel, the voices they present are too divergent with their initial introduction. We do not anticipate such a divergence. We expect a consistent narrator. But McAdam overcomes the impediment of familiarity with the medium by making his characters utterly believable, giving them both a depth in their narration that blurs the dichotomy, giving us something beyond mere polar opposites. Indeed, in their difference in approach we may see some commonality.
This is most clear in the way we never get to see Fallon, the 'Fall' who gives her name to the book. She is Julius's girlfriend, but Noel is no less interested in her. With both Julius and Fall seeing her as little more than a cipher for their own desires, Fall herself remains comparatively anonymous. We see through their eyes her actions, but they do not give us a sense of her personality. Both Julius in his sensuality and Noel in his idealisation give us an image of someone both of which may be correct in identifying an aspect - we know that Fall will have no less complex a persona than Noel and Julius themselves - but which never reveal the person behind those aspects. The holistic Fall never emerges from the page as seen through Noel's and Julius's eyes. Each sees what he projects.
Noel is not markedly jealous. Indeed, he has a good relationship with both of them. He simply waits for Fall to realise that she would be better with him than with Julius. For him, the outcome is logical. Inevitable. An intelligent girl will choose an intelligent boy in the end. He waits, and neither Julius nor Fall suspect the outcome he envisages.
In the end Noel forces the issue with, we assume, tragic results.
It's difficult to do this work justice in a review. There are too many subtleties, too much to consider afterwards. For example, it is clear that from the point of view of the school in which they study, Noel is the ideal pupil. Julius would be seen as the maverick, the troublemaker, and yet the reality is the other way around. It is Noel who needs help, not Julius. As Noel and Julius project their ideals onto Fall and fail to see the individual in the round, so the school projects onto Noel and Julius its own ideals of academic attainment. Does McAdam intend us to think about this mirroring? It's difficult to say. The strength of this work is that it is sufficiently revealing, sufficiently accurate that the complexity of personality and of life is presented with all its alleyways and darkened corners to explore. It is rare for a writer to be able to present such a level of complexity in his or her characters that ideas and implications may be drawn from the work the author very likely never intended to present.
My only criticism of the work is some of the hopping around timelines and the presence of a few other narrators along the way, both of which tend to complicate the story unnecessarily. However, I am to blame for not giving the work the time and attention it deserved, falling into the trap of seeing an easy read which, for all the complexity of character, Fall largely is. Nonetheless, this is a work worthy of a re-read, and I won't make that mistake twice. For that, then, though perhaps a flaw, McAdam deserves only to lose a fraction of a star while I get a slap on the wrist.
A work to be taken slowly and thought about long after it's been read.
Such a dichotomy seems too convenient at first. With two narrators, unusual in any novel, the voices they present are too divergent with their initial introduction. We do not anticipate such a divergence. We expect a consistent narrator. But McAdam overcomes the impediment of familiarity with the medium by making his characters utterly believable, giving them both a depth in their narration that blurs the dichotomy, giving us something beyond mere polar opposites. Indeed, in their difference in approach we may see some commonality.
This is most clear in the way we never get to see Fallon, the 'Fall' who gives her name to the book. She is Julius's girlfriend, but Noel is no less interested in her. With both Julius and Fall seeing her as little more than a cipher for their own desires, Fall herself remains comparatively anonymous. We see through their eyes her actions, but they do not give us a sense of her personality. Both Julius in his sensuality and Noel in his idealisation give us an image of someone both of which may be correct in identifying an aspect - we know that Fall will have no less complex a persona than Noel and Julius themselves - but which never reveal the person behind those aspects. The holistic Fall never emerges from the page as seen through Noel's and Julius's eyes. Each sees what he projects.
Noel is not markedly jealous. Indeed, he has a good relationship with both of them. He simply waits for Fall to realise that she would be better with him than with Julius. For him, the outcome is logical. Inevitable. An intelligent girl will choose an intelligent boy in the end. He waits, and neither Julius nor Fall suspect the outcome he envisages.
In the end Noel forces the issue with, we assume, tragic results.
It's difficult to do this work justice in a review. There are too many subtleties, too much to consider afterwards. For example, it is clear that from the point of view of the school in which they study, Noel is the ideal pupil. Julius would be seen as the maverick, the troublemaker, and yet the reality is the other way around. It is Noel who needs help, not Julius. As Noel and Julius project their ideals onto Fall and fail to see the individual in the round, so the school projects onto Noel and Julius its own ideals of academic attainment. Does McAdam intend us to think about this mirroring? It's difficult to say. The strength of this work is that it is sufficiently revealing, sufficiently accurate that the complexity of personality and of life is presented with all its alleyways and darkened corners to explore. It is rare for a writer to be able to present such a level of complexity in his or her characters that ideas and implications may be drawn from the work the author very likely never intended to present.
My only criticism of the work is some of the hopping around timelines and the presence of a few other narrators along the way, both of which tend to complicate the story unnecessarily. However, I am to blame for not giving the work the time and attention it deserved, falling into the trap of seeing an easy read which, for all the complexity of character, Fall largely is. Nonetheless, this is a work worthy of a re-read, and I won't make that mistake twice. For that, then, though perhaps a flaw, McAdam deserves only to lose a fraction of a star while I get a slap on the wrist.
A work to be taken slowly and thought about long after it's been read.
May 19, 2009
Fall is about two boarding-school roommates, one creepy and one popular and with a girlfriend. Can you imagine where this is headed? Yes, it turns out the creepy one, Noel, has a thing for Julius's girlfriend, who mysteriously "disappears" 2/3rds of the way through the book.
Anyway, it's not the plot that makes this book, it's the prose. McAdam pulls the Faulkner-like "from more than one first-person narrative" thing, but it's not as much of a guessing game as As I Lay Dying. Sometimes things that could have been delicious puzzles are later made too explicit for my tastes ("First letter I got from Julius was two years after I was fired" from the chauffeur, but instead of leaving us puzzling this together it's made completely clear that he's fired as a kind of scapegoat).
I have some problems with the prose of Noel's narrations. He's supposed to be looking back on the events from twenty years, but sometimes he writes as if he is completely unaware of how things end up ("I felt like it was then that our bond really developed" - not only do I always want to gag when someone mentions "bonding," but I think the 30-year-old Noel is smart enough to realize that their bond was illusory). Noel also says other groan-worthy tritisms: "I never trusted myself" and "the things I did could not have been stopped." Maybe McAdam wants us to feel some disgust for Noel's determinism, and if so he succeeded.
Despite my distaste for Noel's dramatics, I found some nice insights from his point of view - how he only could read when others were around, since it separated him from them, how he wonders if he defined himself through avoiding others, or if it was even his choice to begin with. In the end though, I kind of resent identifying with the creepy guy. Maybe it's because I can be a little creepy myself, and I don't like to admit that. I'm also not sure if these insights are consistent with how uninsightful Noel seems in the end.
Julius's narratives (the popular one) are semi-stream-of-consciousness. I say "semi-" because it doesn't feel like the overwhelming streams from Woolf or Joyce; it's easy to follow and in the beginning has a bit of a lyrical quality. I wasn't especially curious about exactly how teenage boys think about their girlfriends, but oh well.
All and all, I enjoyed having a sneak-peak on a book I probably wouldn't have read. I like knowing what's going on in modern literature, and I like reading from Canadian authors every now and then (even if just to remind myself they exist). I don't think that Fall will become a classic in 100 years, but to me it's important to see that authors are still experimenting with how to tell stories.
One final note on content: there's quite a bit of swearing, shower-room type scenes, and a bit of sex, which would have scandalized my high school self. I'd recommend the book for people who wouldn't be offended by those things.
Anyway, it's not the plot that makes this book, it's the prose. McAdam pulls the Faulkner-like "from more than one first-person narrative" thing, but it's not as much of a guessing game as As I Lay Dying. Sometimes things that could have been delicious puzzles are later made too explicit for my tastes ("First letter I got from Julius was two years after I was fired" from the chauffeur, but instead of leaving us puzzling this together it's made completely clear that he's fired as a kind of scapegoat).
I have some problems with the prose of Noel's narrations. He's supposed to be looking back on the events from twenty years, but sometimes he writes as if he is completely unaware of how things end up ("I felt like it was then that our bond really developed" - not only do I always want to gag when someone mentions "bonding," but I think the 30-year-old Noel is smart enough to realize that their bond was illusory). Noel also says other groan-worthy tritisms: "I never trusted myself" and "the things I did could not have been stopped." Maybe McAdam wants us to feel some disgust for Noel's determinism, and if so he succeeded.
Despite my distaste for Noel's dramatics, I found some nice insights from his point of view - how he only could read when others were around, since it separated him from them, how he wonders if he defined himself through avoiding others, or if it was even his choice to begin with. In the end though, I kind of resent identifying with the creepy guy. Maybe it's because I can be a little creepy myself, and I don't like to admit that. I'm also not sure if these insights are consistent with how uninsightful Noel seems in the end.
Julius's narratives (the popular one) are semi-stream-of-consciousness. I say "semi-" because it doesn't feel like the overwhelming streams from Woolf or Joyce; it's easy to follow and in the beginning has a bit of a lyrical quality. I wasn't especially curious about exactly how teenage boys think about their girlfriends, but oh well.
All and all, I enjoyed having a sneak-peak on a book I probably wouldn't have read. I like knowing what's going on in modern literature, and I like reading from Canadian authors every now and then (even if just to remind myself they exist). I don't think that Fall will become a classic in 100 years, but to me it's important to see that authors are still experimenting with how to tell stories.
One final note on content: there's quite a bit of swearing, shower-room type scenes, and a bit of sex, which would have scandalized my high school self. I'd recommend the book for people who wouldn't be offended by those things.
April 26, 2009
The book is told in the alternating voices of two boys in their senior year at an elite private high school. Julius is athletic, likeable, and dating the prettiest girl in school. Noel is an intelligent and occasionally explosive outsider. You can imagine this devolving into stereotyped characterizations, but their voices are absolutely individual. They say and do things that, while never in conflict with their personalities, are not narrowly designed to reveal “character.” They change (and fail to change) over time in ways that are subtle and believable. The same is true for the secondary characters.
The two boys are very different, but one pleasure in this book is that they’re also similar, because they are, first of all, human and young. In their very different interactions with the beautiful Fall, Julius and Noel demonstrate the ways that desire (not just romantic or sexual but definitely that, too) distorts how we see each other, can even blind us to each other’s humanity. Both boys feel trapped and infantilized by the many rules of boarding school; McAdam made me feel again what it was like to be 17 and going crazy inside my own body because I was not quite free yet. The book also captures beautifully the experience of living inside a mind inside a body. Both the cerebral Noel and the more blithe Julius describe how physical sensation is a kind of knowing, yet both seek truer connection, deeper understanding. Julius’s voice is a stream of consciousness broken up into mostly single-sentence or even single-word paragraphs; dialogue and action are written in the same way, as they are being perceived rather than described. It’s a little annoying at times, but I found it both appropriate to the particular character and effective at conveying the feel of living.
Noel, reflecting on the events of the story years later, sounds so intelligent and thoughtful that it’s tempting to accept his observations at face value. Yet he’s entirely unreliable, and the lessons he learned are absolutely the wrong ones. He still doesn’t get that he imposed his own perceptions on Julius and Fall, and he still has not taken full responsibility for his own choices. But McAdam doesn’t say any of this explicitly; he trusts his readers. He also doesn’t offer easy explanations for why the characters do what they do. He brings in back stories, families, and class, but dismisses all these as insufficient. This is a morally challenging book, and artfully written.
The two boys are very different, but one pleasure in this book is that they’re also similar, because they are, first of all, human and young. In their very different interactions with the beautiful Fall, Julius and Noel demonstrate the ways that desire (not just romantic or sexual but definitely that, too) distorts how we see each other, can even blind us to each other’s humanity. Both boys feel trapped and infantilized by the many rules of boarding school; McAdam made me feel again what it was like to be 17 and going crazy inside my own body because I was not quite free yet. The book also captures beautifully the experience of living inside a mind inside a body. Both the cerebral Noel and the more blithe Julius describe how physical sensation is a kind of knowing, yet both seek truer connection, deeper understanding. Julius’s voice is a stream of consciousness broken up into mostly single-sentence or even single-word paragraphs; dialogue and action are written in the same way, as they are being perceived rather than described. It’s a little annoying at times, but I found it both appropriate to the particular character and effective at conveying the feel of living.
Noel, reflecting on the events of the story years later, sounds so intelligent and thoughtful that it’s tempting to accept his observations at face value. Yet he’s entirely unreliable, and the lessons he learned are absolutely the wrong ones. He still doesn’t get that he imposed his own perceptions on Julius and Fall, and he still has not taken full responsibility for his own choices. But McAdam doesn’t say any of this explicitly; he trusts his readers. He also doesn’t offer easy explanations for why the characters do what they do. He brings in back stories, families, and class, but dismisses all these as insufficient. This is a morally challenging book, and artfully written.
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