Some Great Thing

"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

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. Praise for Some Great Thing

"The novel presents many voices, all of them mesmerizing . . . McAdam displays a superb ear for dialogue."

-The 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 Review

"McAdam's debut flexes considerable muscle."

-Kirkus Reviews



Praise for A Beautiful Truth



"Remarkable . . . disarmingly familiar and richly, movingly strange."

-The 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 Appleseed



"McAdam teases and turns around language, giving us a creative and wondrous portrait of nonhuman society from the i