Fall

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Fall is the second novel of Colin McAdam. Set in an exclusive Canadian boarding high school, it is the tale of Noel, who becomes obsessed with Julius and Fall, the most beautiful and most popular couple at school. He sees himself as becoming less of an outcast when he finds out that Julius is his new roommate. Then Fall disappears and this has a profound impact on the both of them.

As someone who shamelessly loves the scandalous lives of rich and irresponsible teenagers, I thought this novel would be a bit like a good and thought-provoking version of Gossip Girl. While the look into the lives in a private high school was interesting on some level, the confusing dialogue and narration, combined with a formulaic plot and a problematic female character, made this a primarily frustrating read for me. The novel involved a great deal of dialogue between the various characters, but it became hard to keep track of who was speaking. I am always open to new forms of dialogue, but it was very hard for me to get enveloped into a story that I did not feel was structured very well.

Much of the book switches between the perspective of Noel and Julius, and usually their thoughts involve Fall. Noel is one of the most unsympathetic characters I have ever encountered. He is obsessive and creepy, and I don’t even love to hate him. A quiet, smart, and selfish young man, he is convinced that there is a cosmic connection between him and Fall, if only she could notice him. I even sympathised more with Julius, who was a stock rich-athletic-handsome-cool-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold. Julius never really developed as a character, just as Noel remained one creepy teenager.

The character that irritated me the most was Fall. She was mainly spoken about and obsessed over, serving as the springboard of the fantasies of these two young men. She is merely a manic pixie dream girl in literary form. The only main female character in this novel exists in order to show the fantasies of two rich and irresponsible young boys. She is beautiful, mysterious, unattainable, and most importantly passive. It made me feel as though that was her most desirable characteristic. Throughout the entire novel, Fall is treated as an object, because the two boys are speaking about her. Maybe the intention is to show that she did represent a certain level of fantasy for them. But why do we need another character like this?

The combination of a problematic female character, not much suspense, and a main character that was so creepy it was boring, I found Fall to be a very disappointing read.

Written by: Sara Yasin, August 10th 2010

Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood after a Lifetime of Ambivalence

admin — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:05:00 +0000

By Rebecca L. Walker

Riverhead

After reading the first few pages of Baby Love in the aisle of a midtown Manhattan Barnes and Noble, I bought a brand new hardcover copy. In recent interviews Walker has said that this is the book she wishes she'd had to read when she was in her twenties. I thank her for writing it. While much of the memoir focuses on the minutiae of Walker's pregnancy—foods eaten, clothing purchased, websites trolled and unnecessary arguments had—her larger commentary on the absence of intergenerational discussions between older and younger feminists about childbirth—save the advice that we have plenty of time—is what most interested and inspired me.

Rebecca, now at thirty-seven, is the daughter of feminist icon and celebrated author Alice Walker. Their tempestuous relationship underscores much of the text, and the trials of motherhood—chosen (Rebecca's) and seemingly ambivalent (Alice's)—and illustrates the complexities of the discussion Rebecca wishes feminists were having both amongst ourselves and, indeed, out there with the rest of the world. "Fertility is finite" she warns, and she encourages young women to take heed and plan having babies just as ardently as her mother's generation urged us to plan careers and develop ourselves into whole people. Her musings on motherhood have gotten her a lot of flack in the press recently. Most infamously, the chapter about her relationship with her stepson, Solomon, has gained attention for her assertion that the love one experiences for a child one has carried to term and given birth to differs from that of a child who has become yours through adoption or marriage or family arrangement. Rebecca Walker is not comparing one love to the other, but is merely saying there are different kinds of love, and all should be valued equally, even in their difference.

Walker's second memoir concludes with the birth story of her son, Tenzin, named after His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the statement "I have no regrets." Ultimately, Walker is encouraging young feminists to be as decisive about our choices to mother or not to mother as we have been about other parts of our lives. In a time when birth in the U.S. has turned into such a profitable industry for insurance companies, hospitals and advertisers, women's reproductive choices—from abortion to the choice to give birth and mother—are as important as ever. Baby Love calls our attention to a hardly discussed topic among young feminists: breaking through the ambivalence around motherhood that is fostered through the constant conflict between second wave feminism telling us that we have plenty of time and the larger establishment pushing us to be mothers because we can, instead of because we choose to.

Written by: Aisha Domingue, July 9th 2007