Fall was a very very good book and has sold me on Colin McAdams. Well the novel combined with his reading for the Lorenzo society has. It is a very interesting book which draws the reader in to become deeply involved with the characters. Personally, I found the characters easy to identify with people in my life… which has led to me being very creeped out whenever I’m around my boyfriend’s roommate now….
The character of Julius comes off as very true to my perception of teenage boys, especially given the situation he was in with such high expectations. Noel was frightening from the beginning. I remember at the reading there was a man that said he was very put out by Noel being psycho because in the beginning he saw himself in Noel… for those of you that haven’t read it, there’s a section very early on where he talks about an empty room after a party being purged of its disease with the former partygoers as the disease… I really hope never to be left alone with this man because just as Fall was Noel’s trigger, who’s to say what will be his? Creepy older men aside, Noel was very well drawn. There’s enough history given of how others perceive him to reinforce the more subtle cues given from Noel’s perspective about how he really isn’t quite right. That he bit off a piece of flesh because someone punched him in the eye is not a comforting thing to know and further puts Julius’ judgement into question. Granted when with him Noel might have acted a little differently and he wasn’t there to see the fight… still though. When they take their revenge on Ant and Noel manages to get Ant hospitalized because of how he tied him up, this should have been an indicator that he wasn’t quite right. I guess to be fair, Ant doesn’t come off as entirely right in the head either. There’s always the chance that I really just don’t understand the level of aggression involved with being a teenage boy and especially one in senior year that can hold his own against older angrier rugby players…
This potential lack of understanding of the boys also allowed me to further define what McAdams left open about Fall. The vague clues as to the disconnect in her family life and the dependant nature of her friendships show a very hard life which Julius and Noel are entirely oblivious to. Despite how certain he is that he sees things no one else sees, Noel entirely misses the sadness that leads the reader to see many times of Fall in tears or being extra distant. Julius is privy to these instances but his understanding of her is too shallow despite how deeply he claims to love her. McAdams stated at the reading that Fall was left undefined because he felt it was impossible for men, and especialy teenage boys, to understand or really see women and girls. In retrospect I’m reminded of arguments put forward by De Beauvoir concerning the myth of woman and find myself inclined to agree with McAdams. If my own experience is to be counted as well, men are just as much of a mystery to women as women are to men.
All in all I highly reccommend this novel to everyone! It’s very well written and has a good mixture of heart wrenching and humor.
