The New World, Anew

In the end, Some Great Thing was always going to be McGuinty’s story. Like Amis’s early novels, the last ones that unequivocally satisfied his readers (Success, Money, London Fields), or Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, Some Great Thing is one of those infrequent “literary” novels that are likely to do extremely well because unlikely readers – i.e. men – will buy them and they will hand them on and let others know about them. On such ordinary gestures the success of a novel is built, regardless of the endorsement of prizes. Appearing from nowhere, bursting with energy, here is a character-driven novel to reinvigorate Canadian fiction just as it was appearing tired, on auto-pilot, and bankrupt of technique, if not ideas. It arrives at a time when there are simply far too many Canadian novels whose elaborate constructions render their characters secondary to whatever is the intent of their sweeping dramas. Above all, Some Great Thing is hugely entertaining, and God knows, Canadian readers don’t get to say that very often.