The Adversary: A Novel

by Michael Crummey Narrated by Mary Lewis

Overview

WINNER OF THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

An enthralling novel about the corruption of power and the power of corruption from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Innocents

"POTENT...A VIBRANT HISTORICAL NARRATIVE"-The New Yorker

"A FLAWLESSLY CRAFTED NARRATIVE" -Wall Street Journal

"MASTERPIECE" -Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)

"CEASELESSLY ENTERTAINING" -Kirkus (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 masterful evocation of a lost time, and a shadowed mirror to our modern politics of grievance and retribution.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

WINNER OF THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD AND ONE OF KIRKUS'S BEST BOOKS OF 2024

"Potent...[a] vibrant historical novel....By turns bawdy, violent, comic, and gruesome."
—The New Yorker

"Ingeniously constructed and wound tight as a mainspring...Flawlessly crafted...A sinuous narrative in constant, elegant motion."
—The Wall Street Journal

“The Adversary is a beautifully written, immensely powerful and subtly ingenious novel. Its greatest — which is to say, most monstrous — revelations are so discreetly offered that you could miss them; but when you realize them, they practically take your breath away."
—The Washington Post

“Crummey weaves forgotten idioms into dialogue and action, creating a knotty, muscular, incantatory language that builds on Melville and Proulx as much as biblical antecedents….The story may be dark but each sentence sparkles….Exquisite prose. Spellbinding drama.… "The Adversary" is a magnificent novel that reinvents and subverts the Genesis account until its final page.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Spellbinding…Along with a vivid setting and memorable characters, Crummey impresses with his dexterous use of language to convey the time period...This gripping page-turner is Crummey’s masterpiece”
—Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)

“[Crummey’s] language is ceaselessly entertaining…The sheer energy of the novel never flags. It’s the latest superb effort by an author who couldn’t be more deserving of greater recognition beyond his native Canada. An enthralling masterpiece.”
—Kirkus (Starred Review)

“Crummey masterfully builds the suspense while tempering the intensity with instances of selfless devotion. Crummey has quietly established himself as one of our best writers.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)

“Crummey writes with a poet’s sense of language, bringing a delicacy and grace to every sentence, even as the beauty of the prose is juxtaposed against the ugliness of its subject matter. . . . Masterpiece is a glib word and one that is thrown-around all too casually, but here it seems to fit: The Adversary is a masterpiece, plain and simple. The fact that it joins previous Crummey novels . . . under that designation, is all the more impressive.”
—The Toronto Star

“Gobsmackingly accomplished… Crummey’s novel simply fascinates. It’s a peerless study of interpersonal strife and power dynamics.”
—Quill and Quire

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2023-10-21
In a remote town on the northern coast of Newfoundland in the early 19th century, a mutually despising brother and sister fight dirty for control of the area’s fishing and mercantile concerns.

The loathsome Abe Strapp is set to inherit his father’s business and merge it with a rival’s outfit through an arranged marriage to the England-born merchant’s 14-year-old daughter, who’s been painfully transported “across the pond” for the wedding. But Strapp’s steely older sister, the Widow Caines, puts the kibosh on the marriage by exposing Strapp as a degenerate who drunkenly raped a servant girl and left her pregnant. From there on, the siblings will stop at nothing to outmaneuver and out-humiliate each other, with the supremely manipulative Widow Caines holding a clear advantage. In her “man’s uniform” of green jacket and waistcoat, she’s taken control of her late husband’s land holdings in spite of women having no legal claims to the ownership of property. Set in the town of Mockbeggar, like Crummey’s previous novel, The Innocents (2019), the tale is full of tragic turns: murders, deaths from a pandemic, death and destruction from a vicious storm, marauders, a gruesome amputation. There’s a Dickensian element to the “debauchery, drunkenness, whoring, gaming, profuseness, and the most foolish, sottish prodigality imaginable,” but Crummey boasts his own prodigious powers of description, cutting humor, and explorations of good and evil in his descent to the lower depths. (He has said he was inspired by William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience.) His language is ceaselessly entertaining, with characters including “cork-brained calf-lollies” and “noddypeak simpletons” and ones named Cheater, Deady, and Terrified. The sheer energy of the novel never flags. It’s the latest superb effort by an author who couldn’t be more deserving of greater recognition beyond his native Canada.

An enthralling masterpiece.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160092652
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/06/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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