I really enjoyed this sombre love triangle where a friendship and crush quickly turn to drama. While the story itself is not terribly original, the writing is superb: the voice of Noel and Julius very different, reflecting their incredibly different points of view and reality. Julius and Fall, a beautiful golden couple, Julius, especially oblivious to evil, envy and darkness; Noel a brooding, misunderstood youngster, uncomfortable in his body and too smart to really fit in.
The events slowly build to its inevitable climax; once I understood the different voices, I had a hard time putting down the book. ( )

from quill and quire and it about sums up my thoughts:

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. ( )

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. ( )

In the book Fall which was written by Colin McAdam, the main characters are Noel, Julius, and Fall. This is a story about new friendship, love, mystery, and curiosity. The book is told in first person, but often switched to different people, mainly Noel and Julius. When you read it, you get to see everyone's point of view and what they are actually thinking.

Noel, being the most interesting character, seemed very uneasy, not friendly, very quiet, and kept to himself most of the time. He didn't have much friends, and also thought he didn't need any. His attitude towards things is different. Towards the middle of the story Noel turns out to be some creep.

Julius, was a different character. Every one seemed to like him, and he was friendly, had a bunch of friends. His girlfriend is Fall. Julius is sincere in the book, and he had a huge amount of love for Fall, he couldn't stand to be away from her.

Fall wasn't a main character that you got to read about what she was thinking and saying, but she was a big part in the story. Fall is a beautiful girl in the book, that every guy just stopped and stared to look at her beauty. She only had eyes for Julius though, no one else.

The boarding school, is where all the students lived normally, and got to go home on weekends. It was a place to learn, earn respect, and also make some friends. For Noel and Julius they were roommates, at first they had never really talked to each other because they didn't show much interest. Julius at one point had started talking to him about his girlfriend, and then that lead to inviting Noel to hang out with Julius and his friends.
They all went to clubs when they wanted to get away from school, and just have a few drinks and have some fun. Sometimes things got crazy for some of the boys.
At the mall they just went to a cafe or something to relax. On weekends was when a majority of the students got to go home and spend the weekend with their family.

The plot of Fall begins with Noel. At first you find him as a normal guy until you get to know the real side of him, then it's just a roller coaster of emotions. Since he never real had any friends and was rooming with Julius, Julius had felt sympathy towards him and invited him out with his friends. With Julius always talking about his girlfriend Fall, Noel felt like he knew her and respected her more. Then after hearing it all the time, Noel just got more jealous and felt like he should express some feelings he's been having. So he sets out to find Fall and let her know. Things got weird and caused Noel to leave in anger.He left Fall out in the snow. That's where the mystery of the story begins.

As for Julius he was always off in his own world. Always trying to find some answer, but also just settling for the way things were.He did anything he wanted at anytime. Julius was a normal teenager trying to live his life, even when he was the son of a U.S Ambassador.

For the voices in Fall, Noel's was lonely, full of life & love. He was lonely because he didn't have the girl he thought he really loved, and he just wanted to share his life and thoughts with someone. Julius was very sincere in Fall, loving, and always happy. He had everything he could ask for and had that someone to spend his life with until something to an unexpected turn. ( )

I found this book to be strange. The author's stream-of-consciousness style - only used when writing from a particular characters point of view - was sometimes perfectly suited, and sometimes just totally annoying. And I found the "resolution" unsatisfying. I wanted to like this, and at times I did, but other times I felt like I didn't know the characters at all, and couldn't care less. ( )