The Adversary
A Novel
-
-
4.2 • 27 Ratings
-
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
Shortlisted for the 2023 BMO Winterset Award • Longlisted for the 2024 Killick Capital Fiction Award, part of the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards
Named Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker • The Globe and Mail • CBC • Toronto Star • Kirkus Reviews
From the award-winning, bestselling author of The Innocents, a dark, enthralling novel about love and its limitations, the corruption of power and the power of corruption.
“A FLAWLESSLY CRAFTED NARRATIVE” —Wall Street Journal
“CEASELESSLY ENTERTAINING” —Kirkus (Starred Review)
“A MASTERPIECE” —Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
”ONE OF OUR BEST WRITERS” —Booklist (Starred Review)
In an isolated outport on Newfoundland's northern coastline, Abe Strapp is about to marry the daughter of a rival merchant to cement his hold on the shore when the Widow Caines arrives to throw the wedding and Abe's plans into chaos.
That ruthless act of sabotage is the opening salvo in a battle between the man and woman who own Mockbeggar's largest mercantile firms, each fighting for the scarce resources of the north Atlantic fishery, each seeking a measure of revenge on the person they despise most in the world. As their unshakeable animosity spirals further each year into vendettas and violence, the community is increasingly divided and even the innocents in Mockbeggar find themselves forced to take sides, with devastating consequences.
Through merciless seasons of uncertainty and want, through predatory storms and pandemics and marauding privateers, it is the human heart that reveals itself to be the most formidable and unpredictable adversary for each person drawn, inevitably and helplessly, into that endless feud.
Compulsively readable and uncompromising, The Adversary is a pitch-perfect evocation of a lost time, and a shadowed mirror to our modern politics of grievance and retribution. It is Michael Crummey's finest novel to date.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Crummey (The Innocents) offers a spellbinding novel of cutthroat sibling rivalry in remote late-19th-century Mockbeggar, Newfoundland, where the desolation of the "gaunt, ascetic coastline" is as much an adversary to locals as the story's primary antagonist, Abe Strapp. A diabolical reprobate, Abe shows up late to his own wedding, an arranged marriage to the 14-year-old daughter of a rival merchant. The ceremony is cut short by an objection from Abe's older sister, the Widow Caines, who claims Abe raped a young servant named Imogen Purchase. Imogen is four months pregnant, and Abe, a notorious drunk, doesn't remember if he forced himself on her as charged. As the story unfolds, Crummey teases out the widow's machinations, showing how she manipulates Abe to get the upper hand on their competing fisheries and mercantile concerns. Abe marries Imogen instead of his intended bride, and as he simmers with anger at his sister, the plot builds toward a violent conclusion. Along with a vivid setting and memorable characters, Crummey impresses with his dexterous use of language to convey the time period. (Though the widow's late husband was "even-handed and generous," most locals had a different take: "He'd lend his arse and shit through his ribs, people said dismissively, as if he was a guileless cake.") This gripping page-turner is Crummey's masterpiece.
Customer Reviews
The adversary, Michael crummey
Crummey uses Newfoundland colloquial language which I enjoyed searching for the exact meanings. The novel showcases Newfoundland’s environment to the point that it seems like a main character. The wind, cold, and churning sea batter ships and devastate homes. This could be the adversary. That said, the constant focus on women and girls being raped was so vulgar it took away from the plot line of the difficult nature of living in an isolated Canadian east coast community.