Kirjahaku

Ottawa in the seventies is colourless, cold, and aching for character, ripe for the taking. Two men, from different ends of society, see the opportunities: Jerry McGuinty, plasterer-turned-builder, a simple, self-made man, and Simon Struthers, with inherited wealth and position, but nothing inside him but longing.As their careers and successes run in parallel - Jerry with his new wife, Kathleen, who likes a drink even more than she likes him, and Simon with his endless affairs and intrigues - we begin to see how a landscape can be shaped by desire. When both men realise that something is missing, and go in search of it, their lives start to intersect, and the story spirals to its astonishing conclusion.

A place of pressure and contradictions, St Ebury is an exclusive boarding school for the children of Canada's elite, where boys must act as men while navigating their adolescence.One of only a handful of girls at the school, Fall is the most beautiful. Noel, a clever, ghostly loner, watches her, certain that one day Fall will come to know him deeply. But like everyone else, she is drawn to Julius, the confident and magnetic son of the American ambassador to Canada. They fall in love and Noel keeps watching.In their final year, the boys room together and as Julius grows closer to Fall, Noel's enthusiasm for their relationship shades into something darker as he imagines himself as a confidante to Julius, sensing that the time has come for him to enter Fall's life forever.

"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.

Award-winning author Colin McAdam's second novel takes place at St. Ebury, an elite Ottawa boarding school. It's a place of privilege and hollow rules, of newly minted "traditions" and the barely restrained animal instincts of the boys. A handful of girls are also in attendance, among them Fall, a beautiful and elusive figure who becomes the object of fascination for many of the male students, including Noel, a smart, intensely idiosyncratic young man. But Fall ends up dating his roommate Julius, the charismatic son of the American ambassador, whom Noel also fixates upon. Amidst a heady mix of hormones and delusional impulses, Noel gradually loses control of his obsessions. Told from the very different perspectives of Julius and Noel, Fall is a psychologically acute and relentless literary thriller of the first order.

"Stark and beautiful, horrifying and lyrical, Black Dove's pages thrum with flight, transformation, grief, revenge, transcendence, the remorseless power of stories and the very nature of creation. Ever since reading, Black Dove has drifted in and out of my dreams." --Helen Macdonald, author H Is For Hawk In a tall and narrow house, on a stained and busy street, live twelve-year-old Oliver and his father, a story-loving writer. Haunted by the ghost of his alcoholic mother, Oliver finds comfort in his father's impromptu tales: the Black Dove, an elusive flower that gives strength; the girl who consumes it as she battles attackers and yearns for happier realms. Stories where lonely souls keep searching despite their losses and grief. Running from a bully one night, Oliver hides in a junk shop owned by an enigmatic man. Soon, instead of hiding in the janitor's closet after school, Oliver spends afternoons in the shop, a cavernous place full of storied oddities and grubby wonders where creatures rise up from the basement. A snake in the shape of a boy. A hunter named Night, part panther, part hound, who proves to Oliver that the world holds invisible wonder. Wanting to forget his mother, afraid of his own genes, constantly harassed by bullies, Oliver joins the shop owner in experimenting with dangerous forms of genetic editing. Meanwhile, he meets the girl from across the street, and their friendship grows in a neighbourhood where magic is real, where murderers gather, and where the darker consequences of fantasies play out. A twisting story of grief and revenge, Black Dove is a thrilling read with its own kind of magic. In rich but tightly reined prose, McAdam celebrates the value and shortfalls of storytelling, finding a light in all the darkness to conjure a tender portrait of childhood's end.

"Stark and beautiful, horrifying and lyrical, Black Dove's pages thrum with flight, transformation, grief, revenge, transcendence, the remorseless power of stories and the very nature of creation. Ever since reading, Black Dove has drifted in and out of my dreams." --Helen Macdonald, author H Is For Hawk In a tall and narrow house, on a stained and busy street, live twelve-year-old Oliver and his father, a story-loving writer. Haunted by the ghost of his alcoholic mother, Oliver finds comfort in his father's impromptu tales: the Black Dove, an elusive flower that gives strength; the girl who consumes it as she battles attackers and yearns for happier realms. Stories where lonely souls keep searching despite their losses and grief. Running from a bully one night, Oliver hides in a junk shop owned by an enigmatic man. Soon, instead of hiding in the janitor's closet after school, Oliver spends afternoons in the shop, a cavernous place full of storied oddities and grubby wonders where creatures rise up from the basement. A snake in the shape of a boy. A hunter named Night, part panther, part hound, who proves to Oliver that the world holds invisible wonder. Wanting to forget his mother, afraid of his own genes, constantly harassed by bullies, Oliver joins the shop owner in experimenting with dangerous forms of genetic editing. Meanwhile, he meets the girl from across the street, and their friendship grows in a neighbourhood where magic is real, where murderers gather, and where the darker consequences of fantasies play out. A twisting story of grief and revenge, Black Dove is a thrilling read with its own kind of magic. In rich but tightly reined prose, McAdam celebrates the value and shortfalls of storytelling, finding a light in all the darkness to conjure a tender portrait of childhood's end.