IN Colin McAdam's debut novel, builder Jerry McGuinty builds homes as a way of making things right.

When his girlfriend, Kathleen, has a son, he builds a whole new neighbourhood, where they move into a large house. When she has an affair, he plans a classy estate with a golf course for her. Still they argue. This is not domestic bliss as he had constructed it in his mind's eye.

Simon Struthers is a city planner regulating Jerry's work. He hates the golf course idea. It would mean bulldozing the park where he first attempted to woo a colleague's teenage daughter. Simon's awkward pursuit of the girl makes for some of the books most technically impressive passages, echoing Nabokov and Faulkner.

But he is a less convincing character than Jerry and it is ultimately the tension between the builder's machismo and his yearning for personal happiness which lies at the heart of the work.

This is an impressive first novel - ambitiously crafted, beautifully observed and underpinned by big ideas. There are moments towards the end when this momentum is let down, once by sentimentality and once by implausibility.

Some Great Thing by Colin McAdam, (Jonathan Cape, £12.99)