Review of Albatross - A Novel; Author-- Terry Fallis By Robin L Harvey
Albatross, A Novel, is a quick and easy read with enough splashes of humour to reward and entertain the author’s devoted followers. It tells the fantastical story of Adam Coryell, a teenager with a fountain-pen fetish who dreams of writing best-sellers.
That is, until he learns his freak-of-nature body is designed and doomed to excel at golf – a sport he finds boring and a waste of time. “It’s not exactly saving the world, is it?” he asks his homeroom teacher Bobbie Davenport, herself a golfer and ladies champion until her back gave out. Davenport uncovers her pupil’s gift through the “Predictive Innate Physical Proficiency” – a test based on an irascible Swedish academic’s research that claims physical measurements alone determine who will excel at any given sport.
Adam’s freakish test results (where he scores an un precedented 99-plus percent) sparks an existential crisis. Should he take the easy path and pursue his genetic gift, or the harder road and try to realize his dream of writing great literature? Driven by his tenacious teacher, his accommodating parents, a crazed scientist and his own desire for fortune, if not fame, Adam chooses to embrace his genetic gift and becomes a world-renowned golf prodigy.
Though he sees little point in driving “little white balls” into a hole, he rockets to the pinnacle of golfing glory, nonetheless. In no time, he’s a pro on the PGA Tour, filthy rich from lucrative endorsement and sponsorship deals who is featured on sports magazine covers and interviewed by big TV networks.
But while he is sucked into the chaos that bedevils sports celebrities, the life he loved vanishes. His dreams of writing are lost as are his family connections and friendships. Finally, his true love says goodbye. Adam is left sick of the spotlight and frenzied fans, stuck playing a game he finds effortless.
“I’m just saying, I haven’t really won those tournaments,” he says. “My one-in-a-billion physical shell won them. I’m just along for the ride.”
On the day he storms out of an ESPN interview hours before he’s to board a private jet to star in a Nike commercial, it’s clear something’s gotta give. And give it does, when an AK-47-toting kidnapper storms the commercial shoot, staged atop Dubai’s Burj Al Arab hotel. Adam is saved by Bobbie, his mentor and stalwart sidekick, who steps in harm’s way.
Sadly, she’s also thrown off the roof while holding on to the crazed would-be kidnapper. Adam is devastated by her death until soon after learns she was dying of cancer anyway. However, she ‘s written him a letter stating her dying wish: Adam must give up golf and follow his true dream.
Finally free, Adam gives up golf and starts studies for a Masters in creative writing back home in Toronto. Once there, after a few detours, he woos and wins back his long-lost true love. The result is happy endings all around. No doubt, Fallis has written an accessible, funny tale that warms the hearts of his fan base.
Still, the book has many weaknesses. It lacks dramatic tension because Fallis relies almost exclusively on Adam’s narration, instead of action and character development, to tell the story. He gives his readers no hint of his protagonist’s inner life or longings, beyond the fact that he wants to be a writer, hates golf and resents the trappings of fame, but not fortune.
The book’s other characters come off like quirky caricatures. And though they are of different ages and sexes, with widely different life experiences, their dialogue sounds awkwardly similar. Over most of the novel’s seven years Adam remains static, a hapless victim of circumstance and genetics. It takes the death of one of his closest friends in a violent tragedy to push him out of his gilded cage.
But, because he did next to nothing to earn his freedom, Adam’s happy ending seems simplistic, shallow and sickly sweet. Albatross could be viewed as coming-of-age novel about a teen who learns to achieve a happy and balanced life. It could also be seen as morality tale that warns of the trappings of unearned success. Yet for some unfathomable reason Fallis, an avid golfer, feels compelled in his acknowledgements to tell his readers that “despite initial appearances, this is not a novel about golf. It’s about life.”
“Most authors would let you arrive at that conclusion on your own,” he writes, “but I just didn’t want to leave it to chance,” he writes. Beyond insulting his reader’s intelligence, if the author’s message is that simplistic, it might explain why his crisp and humorous prose seems threaded through a flabby book that, in order to shine, needs one more good edit and a significant trim.
Albatross - A Novel
Author - Terry Fallis - publisher Penguin Random House - paperback $19.95