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.

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.