fairandfast1
Price: £0.01
In stock
26 used & new from £0.01
See All Buying Options
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
 
Some Great Thing
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

Some Great Thing (Hardcover)

by Colin McAdam (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.


4 new from £0.01 21 used from £0.01 1 collectible from £2.99
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover 5 used & new from £4.12
Paperback (New edition) £6.99 £6.29 29 used & new from £0.01

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Fall

Fall

by Colin McAdam
3.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £9.09
Housekeeping

Housekeeping

by Marilynne Robinson
4.4 out of 5 stars (20)  £4.77
Spiral - Series 1 [DVD] [2004]

Spiral - Series 1 [DVD] [2004]

DVD ~ Gregory Fitoussi
4.4 out of 5 stars (14)  £12.48
Generation Kill - Complete HBO Series [DVD] [2008]

Generation Kill - Complete HBO Series [DVD] [2008]

DVD ~ Alexander Skarsgård
4.4 out of 5 stars (30)  £17.97
Netherland

Netherland

by Joseph O'Neill
3.1 out of 5 stars (108)  £4.20
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Hardcover: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd (4 Mar 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 022406455X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0224064552
  • Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,732,560 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Product Description

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.


From the Publisher

A thrillingly original debut novel
See all Product Description

Tag this product

 (What's this?)
Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.
Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Some Great Thing
75% buy the item featured on this page:
Some Great Thing 4.5 out of 5 stars (2)
Fall
25% buy
Fall 3.5 out of 5 stars (2)
£9.09
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars "Dirt's the future, not the past. Change, move, use it.", 19 May 2004
By Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)   
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

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
5.0 out of 5 stars Extraodinary Writing, 30 Mar 2007
By Andreas Wilhelm (Scotland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Some Great Thing (Paperback)
This novel describes the lives of two distinctly different characters. Jerry McGuinty is a builder/plasterer who apparently doesn't understand the principles of emotion. Simon Struthers is a civil servant working in the Planning Division. His life is full of longing but it seems he never finds emotional warmth.
Both of their lives come together late in the book when Jerry is planning a golf course on the green belt, and Simon is trying to block the development.
The book is based on chapters alternating between the two main protagonists, thus creating views from their different lives.

What impressed me most is the apparent lack of emotional stability of the lives. Jerry's relationship with an alcoholic woman who sells sandwiches at the building sites is at times hilarious, but more often than not, it portrays an emotional sadness, suggesting the characters don't know what they are doing. She gets pregnant and Jerry decides to call his son Jerry. The ensuing monosyllabic dialogues are comical but, again, they show a deep-seated uneasiness as to how to converse with your son.

Simon, incidentally, has one relationship after the other. Constantly thinking of other women, unitl he finds his match. Then the narrative changes and he seems to understand.

Overall I found this novel tells a lot about how those two characters view their priorities without noticing what is really important. I believe that most of us are guilty of being unable to stop and look at our lives. Instead we get on with our material lives.

It certainly is an astonishing read, almost like a mixture between Forest Gump and Vernon God Little
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject








i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.