Some Great Thing

By Colin McAdam

The time is the seventies. The place is Ottawa, a developing city ready for the taking. Two men from very different backgrounds take up the challenge: Jerry McGuinty, plasterer turned builder, a simple, self-made man; and Simon Struthers, whose inherited wealth and position cannot fill the hollowness he feels inside. As the men's careers and successes run parallel, we see how love is suffocated by work and how individuals are crushed by greed and "progress." With skill, energy, humour and poetry, Colin McAdam creates a world of ambition and desire, power and corruption. Some Great Thing is one of the most thrillingly original novels in years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Mar 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9780143189596

Colin McAdam

Colin McAdam's novel Some Great Thing won the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Rogers Writers' Trust Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the United Kingdom. His second novel, Fall, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and awarded the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize. He has written for Harper's and lives in Toronto.

Reviews for Some Great Thing

[kirstiecat · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked up this book while in Ottawa for two Canadian dollars (and the way our economy is headed, next week, the looney will be worth more than any George Washington.) Anyhow, it was on the bargain bin at a Chapters there (which is much like Borders in the states only they play Neon Bible in it's entirety. I gave it my good old random passage test which, as any avid reader will be sure to know, means turning to a random page and if the paragraph is worthy, you chance the book. The paragraph I read had to do with a seven year old boy having trouble still with bedwetting and I bought the book which maybe says something about me (for an entire summer as a teenager, I actually worked at a sleepaway camp where one of my jobs was to wash the sleeping bags of the bedwetters and both remove and bring the bedding back before any of the other boys caught on. I was good at that and I felt really happy and proud of myself that none of the young boys were teased because I was remiss.) Anyhow, back to the point...feeling a little rambly. Basically, the book shows promise in terms of the writing style but gosh don't you just hate it when you can't connect with any of the main characters? I mean, both male protagonists are in their 50s or so and just seem completely unattractive...not physically but as people. Like, how about that crazy wife the one man has...why not base the entire book from her perspective... I could go on but I won't. Read the I would recommend this book to...if you're interested in Canada-particularly Ottawa-and housing developments (as well as construction) this is a worthy read. If not, let me recommend some Virginia Woolf...*sigh*