When I was wide awake and alert, reading Michael Crummey’s The Adversary was a total joy. Fantastic descriptions, layered scenes where every action and reaction has triple meaning, beautiful language. Too often though I was reading it just before bed and my half-awake brain didn’t have enough focus to attend to the layers and I’d find myself having ‘read’ three pages and not remembering at all what had happened or to whom and so re-reading it again the following night (to much the same effect).
Which is to say – this is a great book that you should read when conditions allow you to slowly and carefully appreciate it.
When I did have those occasions what I enjoyed most was the tension between individual characters and the Fates (classic man versus nature / man versus god conflict structures) whether that was plague, or storm, or ice. The resignation of the individual characters to accepting these bigger-than-self constraints stands against the quotidian conflicts on their daily lives, eruptions of brutal violence, and, as the title suggests, the structuring conflict between the Widow and her brother Abe. While the Widow is hardly an easily sympathetic character, I nevertheless found myself frustrated for her – that so much of what she attempts to do is constrained by gender – but in the end I suppose it’s her hubris rather than her gender that gets in the way. And the birds.
Enjoyed, too, the references to the orphans of The Innocents a fantastic companion piece to this historical drama. So take both with you on vacation this summer and give in to the unique pleasure of reading about 19th century Newfoundland – which I get it, does not sound like it’s going to be gripping. But it is! Unless you’re very tired. I don’t know anyone tired these days. All of us: sharp, alert, ready to read.
Literary Vice 