Some Great Thing

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

McAdam’s debut novel, set in 1970s Ottawa, moves along nicely between
two plot lines: Jerry McGuinty’s progress from plasterer to successful
developer, and Simon Struthers’s career as an Ottawa bureaucrat.
McAdam clearly believes that a man’s character is reductive: speech
patterns, vocabulary (profane and otherwise), professional development,
even sexual obsessions are part of what constitutes a man. While Jerry
moves along in the world of contracting (“thirteen neighbourhoods,
five thousand roofs, thirty thousand outside walls, and a rock-hard pair
of hands”), Simon has little to show for his career other than a
certain flair for writing reports. He is driven by an obsession with
women, including the wife and daughter of a co-worker. “I am only
interested in sexual things,” he says to one of his lovers. “I seem
to do nothing but think of myself in private.” In the end, it is this
subjectivity that is Simon’s downfall, while, for his part, Jerry
succeeds despite his painful marriage and his own destructive
tendencies.

Stylistically, McAdam attempts (and usually succeeds in) some
interesting voices. Whereas Jerry’s chapters are in the first person,
boisterous, profane, vernacular, Simon is given a kind of introverted
narrative. As he chases the daughter of his co-worker (think of Humbert
Humbert and Lolita), he retreats more and more into his own neuroses.

Some Great Thing has garnered some impressive honours, including the
2004 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. McAdam divides his
time between Australia and Canada.