The Adversary
A Novel
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4.1 • 35 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF 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 a 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” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“One of our best writers” — Booklist (starred review)
In the isolated outport of Mockbeggar on Newfoundland's northern coast, company man Abe Strapp is about to marry the daughter of a rival merchant and so secure his dominance over the shore, until the Widow Caines, arrives to throw the wedding and Abe's plans into chaos.
As the bitter feud between the man and woman who own Mockbeggar's largest mercantile firms—each determined to ruin the person they despise most—spirals further into vendetta and violence, the locals too are forced to take sides, with devastating consequences.
A compulsive, exuberant and uncompromising historical adventure—for fans of HBO’s Deadwood and Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wild—The Adversary is a wildly entertaining evocation of power, grievance and retribution, and 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.