Some Great Thing by Colin McAdam

I can't decide whether I like this book or not.  The big problem is that all the characters are entirely unsympathetic. They all act like assholes, jerks or idiots, they all end up committing adultery, and they all do so with the attitude that the adultery is some random phenomenon that just happened to them, rather than a conscious decision that they made themselves.  I found it very difficult to work my way through the book because of all this - I simply did not enjoy spending my evenings inside these people's heads.

However, it does have a lot of redeeming qualities.  The author has perfectly captured the vernacular of his diverse characters, both in terms of speech and in terms of train of thought.  He has an unfortunate habit of not indicating frequently enough which character is speaking, leaving the reader counting lines, but the dialogue is impeccable.  Another plus is that the book is about urban planning in Ottawa during the 1970s, but the fact that it is about urban planning does not make the book less interesting in any way.  That's certainly an indication of the author's talent, being able to make a novel about urban planning interesting!

The book itself is quite good, it's just that I found the characters intolerable.  If you think you can put up with the characters, it might be worth reading the book.  I should warn, however, that there is a LOT of profanity in this book.  It's piled in layers upon layers in fascinating combinations that I've never seen before.  For me, the sheer density of the profanity made it meaningless, but other people might not feel this way.