For those interested in "New School" fiction... "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. Working Class Great Gatsby 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. "Dirt's the future, not the past. Change, move, use it." 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 A big, volatile voice for big, contentious themes 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 tunnel. And he has just the piece of land. The same piece Jerry McGuinty has his eye on for his own crowning glory. Luxury homes overlooking a state-of-the-art golf course. Jerry hates golf and all it stands for, but he hires a specialized architect, and pours money into land the government has yet to let him buy. While Jerry determinedly ties himself in knots of red tape, Kathleen continues her downward spiral. Infidelity, alcoholism - obvious in retrospect, but Jerry, as self-absorbed as Simon in his own big-hearted way, never had a clue. An automobile accident lands her in the hospital, and reveals her cirrhosis, but Jerry still dismisses the facts. "I didn't have time to look after her, because the rest of the world was humming, you know, white hot, so Jerry did a lot of the looking after, a lot of the fetching and what have you." A year of this, another hospitalization and young Jerry, 14, has had enough. He doesn't come home. And big Jerry's world finally begins to implode. McAdam's prose is confident, bold, and active; his images sharp and humorous and imaginative. Jerry is a wonderful character, both deeply flawed and heroic. He's a man in whom strength and weakness feed off each other, a man whose willfulness is as destructive as it is powerful. The framework of real estate development, growth, corruption and bureaucratic maneuvering, works both to advance the sprawling plot and as a metaphor for the characters of the men. Jerry bulls ahead, his visions solid and concrete and immediate, but blinkered, while Simon guards his power and prestige, is not above underhanded coercion, and envisions the monumental as his personal legacy. Get through the first 20 pages and McAdam will grab you and not let go until the last page is turned. A strong beginning to a promising career. DOESNT GLITTER IN PLOT, BUT A SPIRITED, UNFETTERED DEBUT I picked this up as a chance trial at an airport book stand, knowing nothing . Discovered that this is a debut, and it's quite an impressive one! The story is grounded in the Canadian construction industry, which may at first make you expect very few thrills 'n chills, but McAdam's prose is brash, ribald and bursts with energy. Even a relatively wry plot about a family's misfortunes and disintegration thereof is lent some readibaility by a clever denouement that weaves in the conflicting ambitions of two very different men. Quite a worthy read, but I would also consider buying a used .
Extrait 1 Kathleen on Wednesday ?Jerry McGuinty was my husband for fifteen years.? ?Oh, yeah?? ?Twenty.? ?But Jerry McGuinty's rich.? ?I'm rich. From a phone call, I'll be.? ?But you weren't really married to Jerry McGuinty.? ?Watch where you're cuttin.? ?How come you're not rich?? ?I am rich. Where's Lisa anyway? It takes a phone call, like I'm, like I'm one of them people, you know, calling. Cut my hair. Where's Lisa?!? ?I told ya. She's sick.? ?What do ya mean, sick?? ?The clap.? ?Ohhh. Lisa?? ?Yep.? ?Who are you?? ?Joanie. I told you. See, it's here. Look in the mirror there. Joanie.? ?Joanie.? ?So your last name's McGuinty?? ?It is.? ?How come it's Herlihy?? ?It's McGuinty.? ?Says in the book, Herlihy. Mrs. Herlihy, ten o'clock, cut and set.? ?Don't you set my hair. I won't pay if you set me.? ?All right, Mrs. Herlihy.? ?Herlihy, eh? Haven't heard that in a while.? ?But ya gave that as your name.? ?Herlihy's a pretty name, too.? ?Herlihy is a pretty name.? ?A Herlihy doesn't get the clap. Not a Kathleen Herlihy.? ?No, ma'am, not a Joanie neither.? ?McGuinty's a name.? ?McGuinty's a name all right.? ?My name for fifteen years or so. Smoke?? ?No thank you.? ?Give ya some cheekbones.? ?No thank you, ma'am. I got cheekbones.? ?Where?? ?I got cheekbones as much as you was married to Jerry McGuinty.? ?Where's Lisa fer shit's sakes? You tell me where Lisa is.? ?I told you. Lisa's dead.? ?What?? ?She died last week.? ?Lisa?? ?Yep. Just after she married Jerry McGuinty.? ?What?? ?Lisa's sick.? ?You tell her to get better.? ?You tell me what it was like being married to Jerry McGuinty.? ?You cut my hair.? ?I'm cuttin your hair.? ?Arse. Jerry McGuinty was the biggest . . . You mind your own biggest.? ?Business.? ?What?? ?All I know is, I wouldn't be sittin in that chair if I was married to Jerry McGuinty. I wouldn't be gettin my hair cut by me, that's what I know, if I was married to Jerry friggin McGuinty.? ?I could afford! I could pay for more than this. Who are you?? ?I'm Joanie.? ?You're not Joanie. I was married to Joanie.? ?Joanie McGuinty?? ?Jerry. Jerry McGuinty was my husband for twenty years.? And I gotta buy cheese. I gotta buy cheese. ?Cheese?? ?Aisle three.? ?Three?? ?Three.? I can count. I can count. Comb your freakin hair, you ugly freakin freak, is all I want, is all I want is cheese. Three cheese. ?Where's aisle three?? ?What?? ?Aisle three fer shit's sakes.? What do ya want with cheese? ?What do ya want with cheese?? ?What?? ?I'm so fuckin thirsty.? ?Do you need help?? ?I want some fuckin cheese.? ?Aisle three, ma'am. That way, ma'am.? ?What?? ?That way, ma'am.? He was sweet, that boy. That way, ma'am, that way. Cheese? Over there, over there by that way, ma'am, ya grubby little freak. ?Which way?? ?Pardon?? ?Where'd he go?? ?Who, ma'am?? ?The grocery boy. He'll bring me a stick of cheese.? That's it, that's right. Run away. ?Drink?? ?Ya can't drink here, ma'am. This is a hairdresser's.? ?I'll just have a drink.? ?Ya can't, Mrs. Herlihy. This is a salon. Put that away now.? ?I'll just put it down here.? ?Put the flask back in your pocket, ma'am. I'm not kidding ma'am.? ?I'll just put it down here.? ?Ma'am.? ?I saw your cheekbones.? ?You see anyone else drinking?? ?There's no one in here.? ?Right.? ?There's no one in here, and you're trying to trick me.? ?I'm not tricking you, Jerry.? ?Jerry?? ?Joanie.? ?It's Kathleen.? ?Your name's Kathleen. Put the flask away, Kathleen.? ?No one else is drinkin cause you're trickin everyone.? ?Just put the flask away. There. In your pocket. You want me to finish your hair, don't ya?? ?Eh?? ?Mrs. Herlihy, ten o'clock, cut and set.? ?I won't have a set today thanks.? ?So you say.? ?So says the Lord.? ?Put the flask away now, Kathleen.? ?Smoke?? ?No.? ?I'll just have a smoke to help your cheekbones along.? ?Thank you, ma'am.? ?You confuse the shit out of me, Lisa.? ?Do I? I'm Joanie. Would you like a drink, ma'am?? ?You're feckin right I would.? ?Cause this is a saloon.? ?Right.? ?Put that away, ma'am. Put your head back there. Have a rest. Have a rest while I set your hair.? ?Get your feckin hands off me, is all I'm sayin.? ?And all I'm saying is you should do your shopping elsewhere.? ?Security!? ?I am security, ma'am.? ?Security!? ?Come on outside, ma'am. Finish your shopping outside.? ?Get your hands off me, and I won't kill you.? ?You won't kill me?? ?Get your hands off me.? ?Please keep your voice down.? ?I want some flippin cheese!? ?You'll get some outside.? ?Why?!? ?What?? ?Where the fuck is aisle three?? ?Mrs. Herlihy? Mrs. Herlihy? Wake up, Mrs. Herlihy. Wake up now, Kathleen. Wake up, ya friggin drunk. Mrs. Herlihy?? ?Yes?? ?You fell asleep.? ?I fell asleep.? ?I've done your hair, Mrs. Herlihy.? ?Where?? ?Just on top of your head, ma'am.? ?That's very kind.? ?Are you all right?? Kathleen on Thursday ?It's Herlihy.? ?Good morning, Mrs. Herlihy. Could you hold for one moment?? ?What?? ?Hold please.? Hold hold hold hold old hold old old. ?Mrs. Herlihy?? ?Eh?? ?What can we do for you today? The usual?? ?Quick.? ?Good morning, Mrs. Herlihy.? ?Robert, is it? Come in come in.? ?Just on the counter, ma'am?? ?Eh?? ?I'll just put it on the counter. I have bad news, Mrs. Herlihy.? ?Give us a drink.? ?It's about the drink, ma'am.? ?What is it?? Itchy, itchy bastard. ?Our supplier had no Dewar's. It's Bell's today, I'm afraid.? ?Right.? ?I thought you hated Bell's.? ?Not just now. Hurry.? ?I was worried.? ?No ya weren't.? ?Pardon?? ?I suppose you want some.? ?Thank you, Mrs. Herlihy. Just a quick one. I've got four more deliveries this morning.? ?Dewar's or Bell's?? ?You don't have Dewar's today, ma'am. I'll have Bell's.? ?You'll have Bell's. I'll have Bell's. I'll have more Bell 's than you cause you're driving.? ?That's only fair.? ?Where'd ya put it?? ?Just on the counter, ma'am.? ?I'll just . . . I can pour the feckin thing . . . Here we go.? ?Thank you very much.? ?Give that back for a second, Robert, is it.? ?Sure.? ?I'll just have a little sip of yours.? ?I wish you wouldn't do that, ma'am.? ?More tomorrow. I'll give yiz.? ?Can't I just have a bit?? Fucker. ?Here. One finger. One and a half fingers.? ?Thanks.? ?Pass that back for a minute. I'll just drink half a finger. There. You're driving.? ?Thanks.? ?Sit, Robert, is it.? ?Thank you very much. Thank you. I like this couch.? ?Fortune.? ?Yeah?? ?Flippin right. I remember.? ?I'll bet. How are you today, anyways, Mrs. Herlihy?? ?I want you to leave, Robert.? ?Sure. I'll just knock that back.? Just knock it back goodbye son. Off then, ya freakin sponge? I'll just slip over here and ring the Bell's and call ya back for more. No? Tomorrow then. Come on back tomorrow. ?Goodbye.? Good morning and goodbye to you Robert, ugly face, freakin mole, strawberry pus on chin. Smell of old teeth. So old in my mouth, and look at yourself. Look at above the couch, dirty freakin mirror, lookin at yourself. Get yourself up for another, and for anyone else? Blinds down behind the eyes. Older than you look. Nothing like you look. Get yourself another. Goddamn couch cost a fortune, might as well enjoy life. Feet! Get a man to lay a carpet just as soon as I finish this here, this drink here cost a fortune. Three fingers at noon, get me through the lunchtime quiet. Half a glass, fat fingers today thank God. There's a toast to all my friends, I wanna thank you all for comin. Get a man to lay me down, three fingers behind the truck. Feet! God damn the knees. Cover your knees ya freakin hag and lie down there on the couch. There ya go. There ya go. Peace and freakin quiet. I'll just have a quick cigarette, if that's all right with you, Robert. Robert? ?It's Herlihy.? ?Hello, Mrs. Herlihy. What can we do for you?? ?Don't put me on hold.? ?No need, ma'am.? ?No need?? ?No, ma'am.? ?I didn't . . . I need my cigarettes. Robert didn't deliver my goddamn cigarettes.? 2 Jerry What I should say is my name is Jerry and I built this house. Four-square, plaster walls, buttressed from toe to tip with an iron goddamn will, my friend, standing proud proud proud. I hammered it into the ground and I pushed it up to the sky, and with the grace of God and the sweat of men I will build a thousand more. All these houses you see around you I built, and neither you nor the grown-up child of your grandchild's grandchild is going to see them crumble. I build, my friend, and up yours if you think me common. I challenge you to build something, and I defy the fist of time to touch what I have done. I challenge you to build a matchstick outhouse in the time it takes me to tell an endless tale. See if you have the will; then wipe that smirk off your flabby pink chops and listen. It is endless. And I am worn. My name is Jerry and my son's name is Jerry, and that's because my imagination was always saved for my work. And Jerry, my son my son, is the life hope love and death of me. Please tell me if you see him. A plague of years ago I put a cigar between my teeth and reckoned myself the greatest man on earth. For there in her hands, careful of the ashes Jer, was the pinkest thing I ever made. Flesh and wrinkles and a boneless chicken in the palm of my hand, screaming in a purple dribbling rage, my boy. My chest, my boy, as swollen as the proud blue sea. But where do I begin? He had a grip as sharp as needle-nosed pliers. And he grew up smart. Praise for Some Great Thing "The novel presents many voices, all of them mesmerizing . . . McAdam displays a superb ear for dialogue." ?Washington Post ?A powerful, poetic, bawdily funny, and tenderly sad novel about class, about love, about drink, about poetics, about land, and about money?a few of the salient things that life and history are made of.? ?O, The Oprah Magazine ?This brash, ribald first novel bursts with energy and spirit . . . Some Great Thing is a boisterous, uncompromising debut.? ?Esquire "McAdam's narrative weaves in virtuoso dialogue as well as genuine warmth . . . This is a big and staggeringly confident book." ?The Observer "Compelling . . . Technical prowess and a surprising empathy mark McAdam as a writer to watch." ?Publishers Weekly, STARRED "McAdam's debut flexes considerable muscle." ?Kirkus Reviews Praise for A Beautiful Truth "Remarkable...disarmingly familiar and richly, movingly strange." ?Wall Street Journal "If A Beautiful Truth lingers long after it is read ? and I promise you, it will ? it's because even as Looee becomes a son for Walt and Judy, he becomes for the rest of us a heartbreaking guide to how we treat our closest living relatives." ?Barbara J. King, author of How Animals Grieve writing for the Washington Post "A Beautiful Truth does an amazing job at telling the stories of chimpanzees in captivity today and it also helps people understand why these amazing souls should be loved, respected and protected in their natural habitat. We hope everyone reads this book and comes to see Chimpanzees as we do." ?Jo Sullivan, Executive Director of Save the Chimps "McAdam's language reaches into that mysterious place where a word ends and a feeling begins. A Beautiful Truth is a story about love and beauty and our dreams for our children and our inescapable loneliness. The characters, human and animal, are sad and honest and true. I could not put this novel down, and only when I finished it could I breathe again." ?Kim Echlin, author of The Disappeared "A work of exquisite sensitivity and prowess, McAdams' tale is of two species astride not a divide but a continuum, of our longings and resiliencies and the fate we share being stronger than we are evolved." ?Alex Shakar, author of Luminarium "Haunting. Heartbreaking.... it is a tale of empathy and honesty, deftly told and beautifully rendered." ?Will Ferguson, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of 419 ?As brutal as it is compassionate, A Beautiful Truth collapses the gaps between humans and chimpanzees, bringing us ever closer to the recognition that what we do to the chimps in our care has the moral power to indict us or to set us free, for in so many ways they are us and we are them.? ?Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods "McAdam teases and turns around language, giving us a creative and wondrous portrait of nonhuman society from the inside out." ?Slate ?If the book were simply the story of the Ribkes and Looee, A Beautiful Truth would still be a remarkable achievement. But the narrative's radical other half, which unfolds in loosely alternate chapters and focuses on a group of chimpanzees in a Florida research institute, invoking their perspective, lends the novel a rare depth... McAdam's acknowledgements attest to serious secondary reading?Frans de Waal and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh are both cited?but his depiction of simian life's limitations turns research into rhapsodic lamentation.? ?The ?[A BEAUTIFUL TRUTH] deftly explores the mind of a domesticated ape...a serious, thoughtful piece of work.? ?The Telegraph ?The narrative [of A BEAUTIFUL TRUTH] doesn't just show humans interacting with primates. Inventively, McAdam, gives them a narrative voice and point of view...the effect is jarring. McAdam has had to create a new language.? ?The Scotsman ?Kafka's sketch [A Report to an Academy] is an enduring satire on the kinship between humans and primates. McAdam's novel is an earnest, daring and insistent attempt to show the moral implications of that kinship.? ?Toronto Globe and Mail, Best Book of the Year Selection "A moving, deeply researched novel." ?Tampa Bay Times "A Beautiful Truth manages to parlay long established and widely disseminated scientific and anthropological facts into gripping and thought-provoking fiction... [McAdam] clearly conducted much research for this book." ?The Miami Herald "Splendid....McAdam explores the unhappy history of humans adopting chimpanzees as playthings, curios and family members. Yet in a year when the National Institutes of Health has begun to formally retire its roster of medical-research chimps, McAdam's novel also sounds an elegy for the chimpanzees who spent their lives in laboratories... At its heart, ?A Beautiful Truth? is about voice - who's talking, who's listening, what's understood and what's not. McAdam makes his novel special by getting inside many heads, especially the chimps'." ?Cleveland Plain Dealer "One might expect the chimp point of view to be distracting, but it speaks to McAdam's talents that they become the most compelling parts of A Beautiful Truth... It's a dark lesson in family, parenting, and community ? the way we impose our ideals on others seems to be the beautiful and horrible truth of human nature." ?Grantland "Colin McAdam's book may be a novel, but it's still based on intense research. On a surface level, it tells the stories you've heard about before--- the childless couple who decides to adopt a baby chimpanzee, the devoted scientist who communicates with chimps in labs, the process of studying pharmaceuticals on primates. But what makes A Beautiful Truth unique is its sincerity, its honesty, and its heart." ?Greta Johnsen, WCQS Asheville The portrayal of chimpanzees as individuals with memories isn't just a fictional device; the commonality of human and chimpanzee conceived here is achieved not by eliminating the traits that divide them but by illuminating the differences that unite them.... With concise language, this heartbreaking tale of loneliness and remembrance reminds us that understanding is a process of growth and experience." ?Library Journal, Starred "[A Beautiful Truth] is grounded in solid research on chimp behavior that, along with McAdam's distinctive poetic prose, informs readers while enriching a deeply moving story." ? "A Beautiful Truth is extraordinary, rather beautiful, and experimental." ?Herald Scotland ?[A] sure-handed and mature work, expertly weaving together shifts in voice and point of view and making use of a poetic language full of direct, sensual metaphors....There are no platitudes about the power of love and our need to feel for one another, but rather an understanding of how sad and damaging a business love frequently is.? ?The Toronto Star ?McAdam has a poetic, impressionistic style, and a sense of humour, and the resulting fantasy is convincing and strangely melancholy.? ?Toronto Globe and Mail "McAdam does a surprisingly thorough job of dispelling the idea that Looee and the other primates in the novel are just lumbering, dumb animals... Heart-wrenching. " ?Bustle
Titre: Some Great Thing
Auteur: Colin McAdam
Editeur: Soho Press
Reliure : Broche
Langue : Anglais
Publier en : Anglais
Languages d'origine : Anglais
Edition : Reissue
Date de publication : 21/10/2014
Date de réédition : 21/10/2014
Dimensions : 820,00 x 550,00 x 819,00
Nombre de pages : 416 pages
Autre : In his highly acclaimed debut novel, Colin McAdam depicts the struggle between two men involved in building a city's future developer Jerry McGuinty, blue collar, selfmade, a master craftsman, and Simon Struthers, a civil servant from a prominent, wealthy background who shapes land-use policy. Jerry has a blind spot for his alcoholic wife, and Simon moves between women, consumed by a frantic emptiness. When their two stories begin to intertwine, their lives and ambitions are set on a collision course. A richly observed story of family, class, love and the individual contributions we make to the bigness of the world, Some Great Thing is a powerful work from one of the most exciting voices of his generation.
Classement : Livres anglais et étrangers > Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction
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