Colin McAdam's 'Fall' takes us into the world of adolescent boys with a dark twist

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by: Sheri.Block
Date: 10/30/2009 9:37:00 AM ET

Sex, shenanigans and sneaking out – the lives of adolescent boys at an elite Canadian boarding school are vividly explored in Colin McAdam’s Giller-nominated novel.

McAdam has first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to attend such a school, and well, to be a teenager with raging hormones, and says much of the characters’ experiences are similar to his own – with the exception of the tragic disappearance of the prettiest girl in school, which is what occurs in “Fall.”

• Click here to read an excerpt from "Fall"

“I didn’t experience any missing girls or some of the darker stuff I suppose,” the Montreal author tells CTV.ca with a laugh.  “I had a pretty happy time, but yeah, that’s what boys are like. I just worked from memory for the most part.”

What starts off as a story of two boys who room together in their final year at the prestigious St. Ebury in Ottawa turns into a tale of twisted obsession.

Julius is the son of the American ambassador to Canada and the most popular boy in school. He’s most concerned with finding ways to be alone with his equally popular girlfriend Fallon (or Fall as she is called). Noel, the quiet, awkward one with a vivid imagination, is the son of the Canadian Consul General in Australia. Yet somehow the two bond through their late night chats in their respective bunk beds and forge a deep friendship – at least as far as Noel is concerned.

“I was thinking of it as just more and more a story about people getting to know each other and I wanted one guy who sort of made that effort in an 18-year-old boy’s way, with Julius, but another one who prefers to imagine who people are, other than actually getting to know them. That’s how I thought of Noel right from the beginning really,” says McAdam.

Noel begins to idolize both Julius and Fall and has convinced himself he and Fall will be together once she realizes he is the one who truly understands her.

“I liked the idea of creating a sympathetic villain I guess. Someone who grows increasingly creepy,” says McAdam.

When Fall suddenly goes missing, everyone becomes a suspect.

“I wanted to tell something slightly sort of chilly, something suspenseful and maybe a little unsettling,” says McAdam.

Both Julius and Noel take turns telling their side of the story in the novel – in very different ways. Noel’s passages are thorough and contemplative, while Julius’ are sparse and shallow and usually revolve around having sex with Fall. It’s a stylistic choice deliberately chosen by McAdam.  

“I wanted to, with Julius, portray what I think of as a realistic teenager, someone who doesn’t quite see the world in the round and isn’t great at expressing himself and yet still has lots of energy and enthusiasm and ability … and then to have another character who is the opposite, who sort of hides behind words and uses them to keep from knowing himself and other people I guess. I thought that would be a good way of getting some of that suspense and chilliness out.”

McAdam, who was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award for his first novel “Some Great Thing,” initially wanted to focus on international relations for his second book.

But his idea soon morphed into a story about a boarding school similar to the one he attended while growing up in Ottawa.

“It just occurred to me that a boarding school would be a good place to sort of bounce around some ideas and I guess the characters just sort of ended up going where they went and (it) ended up being about something completely different than international relations,” he says with a laugh.

McAdam says a boarding school is the perfect place to explore issues of identity and it’s easy to imagine what could unfold in such an environment.

“It’s all there. You throw a bunch of bodies together in a small space and weird stuff will happen.”