Some Great Thing

This book is breathtaking. Every page sings with language and imagery so unique and so evocative you want to read it over and over. At the same time the plot, the characters and the startling humour keep the pages spinning. The focus is on two men who are chasing greatness (one by building suburbs, the other by designing them), but much of the power and beauty come from the women and the child at the edges of the book. The author shines a subtle light on these characters - they are strong characters, and complicated. On one level, the book is all about chasing, but, ultimately, it's about the effect of being chased. There is not a single misplaced word in this book. It's a book that must become a classic.

Canadian author McAdam opens with a series of short, semi-coherent dialogues between raving drunk Kathleen Herlihy and her hairdresser and her liquor-delivery man. This is not how I, the average reader, would advise a new writer to begin his debut novel, but McAdam's voice - and prose - is strong enough to get away with it.Besides, I peeked. Normal narrative was just around the corner. So I was able to sit back and enjoy the brief soliloquies and authorial interjections, which introduce the next two characters, Ottawa builder and developer Jerry McGuinty, and wealthy bureaucrat Simon Struthers.Jerry, the primary narrator, has a vigorous voice, straight from his ambitious, working-class heart. From the vantage point of a tenuous reunion with his just-grown son, he looks back over a life of consuming ambition and familial neglect, or at least willful blindness.Jerry, a plasterer and the son and grandson of plasterers, starts life wanting something more than a weekly wage. Housing developments are booming around 1970s Ottawa, and Jerry deplores the flimsy structures he's building for someone else. He dreams of buying land and building better houses. Then he meets Kathleen Herlihy, who runs a lunch van and renders him speechless. "It wasn't fear and it wasn't shyness, really, it was just the thought that this woman handing me a sandwich is what the world will always yearn for as it grows."Canny, sardonic Kathleen coaches him on how to approach the bank and he credits her for his first scary loan, his first real start. But Kathleen has problems. She disappears sometimes for weeks at a time. Her temper is unpredictable. She moves into her van. She drinks. When she gets pregnant Jerry moves her into his first development and they have little Jerry. Jerry relates all this with awe and bewilderment. His days were consumed with building, buying, selling and juggling debt. Kathleen was difficult: mercurial and angry at his absences, unfulfilled by motherhood.Simon's story is less directly told. Point-of-view, primarily third person subjective, shifts intermittently to an authorial first person. Simon, a functionary with the agency that ultimately controls Ottawa's shape and direction, is so self-absorbed that it's unclear how much his vision of himself is real. A womanizer with a Lolita fixation on Kwyet, the daughter of a bribe-taking colleague, Simon pursues affairs with co-workers (and Kwyet's mother) until they tire of him:" `Mr. Struthers, to me you are a cipher. A mystery once, and now a perfect zero.'She was so offensive as to be arousing."Nothing really touches him, though he fears she's right. He hides his fear behind that aloof mysteriousness. The son of a prominent politician, Simon dreams of leaving his own historic mark. He borrows a visionary project straight from "the dreambook," a collection of whimsical plans too preposterous or expensive ever to come to fruition. A scientific project, with lasting benefits for city and country: a wind tunn

The bull-dozing, digging, grading, and construction in Ottawa in the 1970s serve as metaphors for the ambitions and dreams of two men, whose parallel lives exist on completely different planes until they briefly intersect at the height of their careers. Jerry McGuinty, an up-by-the-bootstraps contractor comes from a family of plasterers, a man dedicated to giving good product for a good day's work. Simon Struthers, the wealthy son of one of the "Mandarins" of Ontario, on the other hand, is a powerful administrator in the National Capital Division, an independent division of government formed in 1899 to plan the land use within Canada's capital. While Jerry sees land as offering unlimited possibilities of houses, malls, and golf courses, Simon sees land as a resource to be conserved, not for the sake of conservation so much as to keep the demand high, his own power intact, and his importance enhanced. Jerry's unpretentious and ungrammatical story alternates with that of Simon, and their paths cross when Jerry sets out to build a subdivision that will surround a golf course. As Jerry's business becomes almost totally hamstrung by the red tape at the Capital Division, his home problems intensify with his wife's alcoholism and infidelity, along with his son's alienation and resentment. Simon, unable to make any sort of commitment in his private life, also delays action on Jerry's permits.McAdam has tried to make the construction industry an exciting subject for a novel by focusing on the emotionally limited characters in the story, rather than on the industry itself. Unfortunately, Simon Struthers, one of the main characters, is a cipher with whom the reader will develop little, if any, genuine connection, while Jerry McGuinty commands our full attention and emotional involvement. With the point of view alternating between Jerry and Simon, the author creates scenes reminiscent of one-act plays, often filled with humor and irony, and inspiring the reader's empathy with Jerry. Several scenes consist entirely of dialogue and are easy to imagine on stage, but these dialogues also remind the reader of the inanities with which we pepper our everyday conversations, and some readers may become impatient with this conversational "filler." Ultimately, the novel focuses on the idea of land as potential, a parallel for the goals and dreams of the characters, which for Jerry is "something big you can walk right past...your modest contribution to the bigness of the world." Mary Whipple

This is simply one of the finest novels - first or fifth - to be published in the english language in many years. My friends from Canada have been raving about it and I'll admit I was skeptical as I approached (anything with that much advance hype tends to disappoint). But the book exceeds all expectations. It's a sensation in Canada for a reason: it's brilliant, utterly original and a brave braid of two completely different voices within a complicated, sophisticated story structure. At the center is Jerry - big hearted, powerful and ambitious. At his side is Cathleen - boozy, tragic and crazy (a gritty Daisy Buchanan). Their rise and fall - all told in dizzying prose - is the stuff of great literature. Colin McAdam is without a doubt one of the most talented writers on the planet today. After the prizes inevitably reign down on this book, McAdam will be a household name. I can't wait to see what he does next.

"Some Great Thing" is a well-above average piece of writing and an absorbing story (at least the sections that involve Jerry). It far exceeds most debut fiction. The most compelling sections integrate the growing pains of rapidly expanding Ottawa in the 70's with the much more excruciating pain of a family breaking apart due to neglect and alcohol abuse. Listening (and that's fairly accurate given the narrative style) to Jerry, with his rough workday speech, describe his ascent from blue-collar plasterer to real estate empire-maker is mesmerizing. The hints of familial disaster that surface early in the book suggest something in sharp contrast to Jerry's sturdy construction projects. Ideas about the city, the neighborhood, Jerry's family, and Jerry himself are beautifully intertwined.The other prominent storyline is not as memorable. Maybe it's just the subject matter - a self-absorbed, womanizing bureaucrat well practiced in the art of governmentspeak. We get no clear vision of Simon (he doesn't really have a clear idea of himself so maybe that's the point). His delusional obsession with Kwyet and his vacillations over the future of the park don't inspire the same passion as Jerry's singleminded drive to leave his mark on the world, at the expense of his family.Overall, I would recommend this book for those who read regularly, particularly if you enjoy exploring "modern" narrative techniques and are willing to take a chance with a newly published writer.