Some Great Thing — Colin McAdam

“A powerful, poetic, bawdily funny, and tenderly sad novel about class, about love, about drink, about poetics, about land, and about money” (O, The Oprah Magazine).
 
Real estate developer Jerry McGuinty is a self-made man from a blue-collar world, a master craftsman who strives to fill the growing Canadian city of Ottawa with beautiful homes and has a soft spot for his alcoholic, unpredictable wife. Simon Struthers is a civil servant from a prominent, wealthy family who shapes land-use policy, and 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, social class, love, and the individual contributions we make to the bigness of the world, Some Great Thing is a reflection on the meaning of home and a “compelling, bawdy debut” (Publishers Weekly).