In Some Great Thing (2003) and now Fall, Colin McAdam
investigates a disappearance. True, in each book, someone
actually disappears, but late in the novels’ progress. The more
important disappearance for McAdam is how some people conceal
themselves from others, receding from the world, despite remaining
physically in it. Of course, this behaviour has consequences. Though
McAdam modulates narrative voice—and through that tone, pace and
language in inventive ways—the congruencies between his two books
pile up and cause distraction: the setting on a fringe of Ottawa, the
two main male characters at first distant, then pulled together in a
moment of tumultuous awakening. The second novel seems in too many ways
an echo of the first.
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2009.