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. Praise for Fall

"Sensitive, honest and horrifying."

-The Guardian

"Heralded as one of Canada's most interesting new writers-despite the fact that he is really a citizen of the world-with Fall, McAdam takes us on a journey worth making."

-The Globe and Mail

"Fierce, dark, and disturbing-Fall is a journey into obsession and desire. The characters are complicated, real, and passionate. I read this novel from cover to cover in a single sitting, then told everyone I know to do the same. A haunting, memorable book."

-Aryn Kyle, author of The God of Animals



"This book tells a riveting story that breathlessly and beautifully swallows the reader, so there is the sensation of being in there and not just observing what happens. McAdam's style is perfect for his subject: the intensity of young love and the intensity of self-hatred. Reading it is a marvelous experience."

-Elizabeth Strout, bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Colin McAdam's novel Some Great Thing won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the UK. His most recent work, A Beautiful Truth, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. He has written for Harper's and lives in Toronto. 1

The days that made me, that were supposed to change me, that didn't actually make me, are showing me now what I was. My days in the room with Julius. Years have provided some safety.

That was not a school with pipes and dons and tweeds.

    It wasn't a place where people spoke like people don't speak.

    It wasn't in the Highlands of Scotland or the hills of New England.

    It was a place of traditions but the traditions weren't old.

    Like most private schools it was part fantasy, part reality, and therefore all reality. A place where stories happened, not fables, where there was learning, not lessons, and no one came away with memories of neat moral episodes. I came away with memories.

    There were too many contradictions for there to have been any sense, and my life has always been so. We were boys who wore suits, monkeys with manners. We didn't have parents but were treated like babies. We were left on our own but had hundreds of rules to abide.

    We were eighteen years old, as grown-up as we could be.

    My memories are twitching like morning in the city.

"Laundry day," said Chuck. He was standing in the hall with Ant, looking into our bedroom, where Julius was lying with a cloth over his eyes.

    "Laundry day," said Ant, echoing Chuck, and he rushed into our room, swung his laundry-filled pillowcase, and pounded Julius in the head.

    Julius said, "Fuck off. I mean it."

I had to take a test to get into St. Ebury. I was fourteen. My parents took me-just before they went away. The three of us sat across from the Head Master, who did all the interviews himself, and I noticed that he never looked at me oddly.

    "Noel will have to take a test," he said. I loo