Prizes and Awards:
Amazon.ca/Books in Canada
First Novel Award Winner 2004
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Product Description
Amazon.ca
Readers may be excused for approaching Colin McAdam's Some Great Thing, a historical novel set in 1970s Ottawa, with a degree of cynicism. While the popularity of historical novels has never been stronger, the genre has reached the point of exhaustion, with most recent books being little more than moralizing reconsiderations of the past. Thankfully, Some Great Thing reverses the course of this trend by returning to the genre's roots--not by rewriting history, but by exploring how history came to be made in the first place.
In this case, the history of Ottawa is shaped by the passions of two men: house developer Jerry McGuinty and bureaucrat Simon Struthers. McGuinty is obsessive in his desire for Kathleen, a free-spirited woman he eventually marries. But McGuinty is also obsessed with fantasies of building a city out of the empty land around Ottawa--of building the future. His desire to build perfect neighbourhoods consumes him, and he is unable to see his home life falling into ruin until it's too late. Similarly, Struthers's desire to leave a legacy leads to his quest to create some sort of lasting monument in the developing city, but this passion becomes entangled with his yearnings for a young woman, with disastrous results.
The lives of the two men intersect over the course of the novel, and their interactions shape the development of Ottawa itself. Not surprisingly, the city's history is one of broken dreams and failures, of corruption and the desire for power winning out over visions and ideals. Out of this bleak material, however, a story of redemption and self-discovery slowly emerges. McAdam's characters apply the basic premise of the historical novel--reconstruction of the past--to themselves, and they explore their own lives not only to make amends for the past, but also to find new ways of living in the present. --Peter Darbyshire
Books in Canada
Some Great Thing is an ambitious novel. Two men live parallel lives until they eventually intersect. Jerry McGuinty is a working class young man with grand dreams and the smarts to bring them to fruition. It is the 1970s and Ottawa is experiencing a building boom, and Jerry becomes successful and wealthy by building quality houses. His difficulties stem from meeting and marrying a spirited Irish caterer named Kathleen Herlihy, who proves to be rancorous and even at a young age has an inordinate thirst for whiskey. They have a son, Jerry Jr., and the final third of the book is Jerry Sr. trying to reconnect with Jerry Jr. who has taken to the streets at 14 after years of mistreatment by his alcoholic mother, something that Jerry Sr. tended to overlook while he was building his empire. The second man is Simon Struthers. He is from old money, a career civil servant, a small time lothario, corrupt, smarmy, a voyeur and a stalker. But this is Jerry McGuinty’s book and Simon is totally unlikable and consequently his romantic and business intrigues are not very interesting. Simon finds himself in a position of power, controlling land primed for development, and after stringing Jerry along for years, creates a project he hopes will be his legacy while damaging Jerry financially. The novel is for the most part successful because of the strong portrayals of Jerry Sr. and Kathleen, although the Hemingway-like dialogue, running for pages without identifying the speaker, is occasionally confusing, and the whole book could have been edited down by at least 50 pages. Still, it is an excellent first effort from a very promising writer.
W. P. Kinsella (Books in Canada)
W. P. Kinsella (Books in Canada)
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