The Adversary

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#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“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.#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

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

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

“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.” —Toronto Star

“A beautifully written, immensely powerful and subtly ingenious novel. Its greatest 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] has plumbed his region’s past to create some of the most stark and eloquent fiction written in this country in the current century. . . . [The Adversary] ranks among [his] finest.” —The Globe and Mail

“Magnificent . . . mordant, masterful. . . . 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. . . . Each sentence sparkles. . . . Exquisite prose . . . spellbinding drama . . . The Adversary is a magnificent novel.” —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.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An enthralling masterpiece. . . . Crummey boasts . . . prodigious powers of description, cutting humor, and explorations of good and evil in his descent to the lower depths. . . . His 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.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A splendid tale of sibling rivalry and escalating retribution. . . . Crummey’s characters leap off the page. The exquisite period language is lyrical yet unrelentingly portentous, and the insults are of Shakespearean caliber. . . . The cumulative misfortune falls somewhere between biblical and Dickensian as Crummey masterfully builds the suspense while tempering the intensity with instances of selfless devotion. [With The Adversary] Crummey has . . . established himself as one of our best writers.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Gobsmackingly accomplished. . . . Crummey’s novel simply fascinates. It’s a peerless study of interpersonal strife and power dynamics, as well as a portrait series of a community deeply prone to weathers.” —Quill and Quire
MICHAEL CRUMMEY is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Little Dogs: New and Selected Poems and Passengers, and the short fiction collection Flesh and Blood. His first novel, River Thieves, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and his second novel, The Wreckage, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His third novel, Galore, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and the Caribbean) and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His fourth novel, Sweetland, was also a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His most recent novel, The Innocents, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. Michael Crummey lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.CA

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