Set in Newfoundland, Abe Strapp inherited his wealth from his father. The Widow Caine inherited her wealth from her deceased husband. Abe looking to gain ultimate control of the business scene in Mockbeggar plans to marry his largest competitor’s daughter. Not one to be trifled with, the Widow Caines throws a monkey wrench into the plan which sends the young bride and her father fleeing. The feud continues between Abe and the Widow Caine taking many twists and turns throughout the novel.
THE ADVERSRY is a beautifully told story. It is historical fiction as its’ best. Loved it.
Thank you to Penguin Random House and NetGalley. for providing access to an advanced digital edition.

Michael Crummey has again delivered a fantastic piece of Newfoundland historical fiction. I really enjoyed some of word choices common to Newfoundland (e.g. livyers) and I had no idea there was ever a Quaker presence here. I’m a little confused by the deer hunting, but I guess that was caribou?

Great storytelling as one expects of Crummey. Abe Strapp and Widow Caines are siblings who hate one another. Between them, they own everything worth owning in and around an outport in Northern Newfoundland. Adversaries all their lives, retribution comes at last.

Michael Crummy is one of my favorite authors and his writings about life in 19th century outport Newfoundland are always intriguing.

This novel revolves around the community of Mockbeggar, a fishing village whose members are either employed by the manipulative Widow Caines or her horrible, terrifying brother Abe Strapp. The sibling rivalry between the two is extreme and both are unlikeable characters. When the inhabitants aren't focused on staying out of view of the siblings, they have to deal with pestilence, a devastating storm, marauding privateers, corruption, and injustice. That being said, it isn't all doom and gloom. There are some likable characters, namely Lazarus, Bride, and Solemn who show that there is still some good in the world.

Some surprises and takeaways for me include the overlap of characters from Crummey's previous novel, "The Innocents." It was interesting to hear the story of the Best siblings from another perspective. I also found that Crummy kept tricking me with the story direction. He tended to introduce characters that I thought would change the plot direction but my predictions were usually wrong lol.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

Michael Crummey just gets better and better, although this is one of his darker novels and filled with unlikable, but compelling characters.

I'll definitely be recommending this novel to anyone who enjoyed The Innocents.

I found it fascinating that while it's set in the same area (the coast of northern Newfoundland) at roughly the same time (late 18th century), The Adversary is almost a mirror image of its predecessor. Once again a brother and sister are the main characters, but this time they are adults instead of children, wealthy instead of poor, and they despise one another instead of being as close as two people can be.

It's a bleak novel, but beautifully written and fully imagined.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read a digital ARC in advance of publication.

This is a dark and somewhat depressing story about sibling rivals (brother and sister) in a small outpost in Newfoundland in the late 18th century. The book deals with hate, poverty, violence, religion, and the abuse of power and the writing, while beautiful, is sometimes hard to understand. In spite of that (or maybe because of it) it is a wonderful, deep and thought provoking story. In a fight between those with power, it is the little people that get hurt.

I always look forward to a new book from Michael Crummey. And again I have not been disappointed; this one, like his others, is a compulsive read.

Abe Strapp and Widow Caines are the owners of the largest mercantile firms in the isolated outport of Mockbeggar in northern Newfoundland. They fight for dominance in the North Atlantic fishery. They despise each other: “They each saw in the other the antithesis and obstacle of all they valued and wanted from the world.” Their machinations end up drawing in everyone into their endless feud because “Abe Strapp and the Widow Caines viewed the world as a glass to their own visage and nothing within their sight was granted a life independent. Every creature beyond themselves existed only to serve their designs and appetites.”

At a funeral, the officiant warns that “’Strife . . . begets strife. In the death of this innocent, God implores us to lay aside wrath and malice and revenge and to put on the bowels of compassion one toward another. Otherwise we are lost.’” From the beginning it is obvious that neither of the two is able to take this advice so tragedy is certain to follow. It is just a matter of time so as I read I found myself dreading what would happen to more innocents.

Though Abe and the Widow are enemies, they are equally unlikeable and very similar. Abe is a truly vile man; some of his actions left me stunned in horror. Even his father recognizes his son’s “pernicious appetites, his vanity, his incurious scorn.” He never takes responsibility for his actions, instead spending his time listing “many grievances . . . and the larger forces at work in the world to keep him from the heights he felt himself heir to.” He is very proud and his pride is easily injured; when it is, he will take revenge. Whether a person is guilty or innocent matters not. He has a “relish for the world’s puerile and transient pleasures.” In the course of the novel, he is shown guilty of all the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth.

Widow Caines is more subtle, “quicksilver and inscrutable, impossible to pin down and herd.” One man describes her as possessing “the Dark One’s cunning and subtlety.” She wears her father’s suit whenever in public and she is described as possessing a “masculine arrogance”; people believe “something essential to a woman’s station was lacking in her.” She states, however, that she doesn’t want to be like a man; she just wishes she had their choices and options not available to her as a woman: she has “a disgust for the circumstances she was born into, for the cockeyed rules that governed the world’s standards and proceedings and transactions, setting one thing over another against all sensible measure.” She, like Abe, is consumed with getting what she wants regardless of the consequences to anyone else: “A curt, self-satisfied dismissal of everything but her own way in the world, a willingness to follow that light into whatever darkness might come to meet it.” She is a consummate manipulator, taking advantage of people: “It was his goodness she’d been drawn to from the beginning, his incorruptible decency. His loneliness. Things she felt she might some day leverage to her own ends.”

Three times, the Widow is described as someone who would eat her own children. By the end of the book, I was convinced of this assertion. The same would apply to Abe. The book blurb states that the novel is about “the corruption of power and the power of corruption.” That is indeed a focus. So many good people suffer because of the actions of those in power. My sympathy was for those who are unwitting pawns used in the power games played by Abe and the Widow and their enablers, enablers who are often also in love with power and are corrupted by it.
This book captured my attention from the beginning and never lost it. Storms, disease, and hunger plague the residents of Mockbeggar. There is danger also from marauding privateers. And then there is the suspense about what the merciless adversaries will do next and who will suffer as a consequence. There are some surprise twists, but what is not a shock is that the good and innocent are the ones most affected. (Readers of Crummey’s novel The Innocents will recognize the references to the Best orphans.)

There is so much to dissect in this novel; for instance, an entire essay could be written about the author’s word choices. This is a book that will definitely go on my To Re-Read pile!

Set in the same timeframe (late eighteenth-century) and along the same stretch of Newfoundland’s northern coast as The Innocents (the Best siblings from that novel are referenced a few times here), The Adversary trains its focus onto those few who knew wealth and power in the isolated fishing port of Mockbeggar (to wit: we immediately meet the Mr. Strapp to whom the Best orphans were indebted). With a struggle for dominance at play between two rival operations — and with gender, class, and race imposing their own pressures — this gritty historical fiction is really the story of how the whims, egotism, and greed of those at the top translates into helpless misery for the working class. Plus ça change. Once again, Michael Crummey has brought breathing life into his characters and setting — with the sensibilities of a poet, his word choices are always evocative without being florid — and while his powerseekers are thoroughly unlikeable, it’s the little people caught in the crossfire that give the reader someone to root for. I was absolutely captivated by the storytelling here — from the sentences to the overall story arc — and I loved the whole thing.