"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.