Some Great Thing

Ottawa in the seventies is a field of dreams: a developing city, ripe for the taking. Two men, from different ends of society, see the opportunities: Jerry McGuinty, plasterer-turned-builder, a simple, self-made man, and Simon Struthers, whose inherited wealth and position cannot fill the hollowness inside. As their careers and successes run in parallel - Jerry with his new Irish wife, Kathleen, who likes a drink even more than she likes him, and Simon with his endless affairs and intrigues - we begin to see how love is suffocated by work and the drive to succeed, how individuals are crushed by money and progress. When both men finally understand what they are losing, and go in search of it, their lives start to intersect, and the story spirals to its astonishing conclusion. A thrillingly original novel about ambition and desire, power and corruption, Some Great Thing has the same epic emotional grandeur and sweep as The Great Gatsby. Written with great skill, and with huge compassion for his broken characters and their thwarted dreams, Colin McAdam has created one of the finest first novels of recent years.