Michael Crummey’s “opponents”: fratricidal duel in New Terre

By wren.parker

August 15, 2025

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A earthy book full of verve for this very black novel signed Michael Crummey: in a small village of new land fishing in the 19th century, the terrible confrontation of a brother and a sister for the control of trade and fishing.

Michael Crummey is an English -speaking Canadian author already well known at home. Similarly, His novel Opponents was published in 2024 at Phebus. Furthermore, here it is re-published in small format at Libretto For the new school year 2025.

michael crummey's Mockbeggar, a small fishing village, a simple fishing station, a “Moving corner of the Kingdom of God”on the east coast of Newfoundland (today a district of Bonavista).
At the beginning of the 19th century. Therefore, it was there that a few Protestant settlers from England, a handful of Irish Catholics and some austere Quakers, face a harsh and wild nature in the hope of a good fortune or the forgetting of a dark past.
A terrible epidemic has just decimated the small community. Therefore, rebutting the cards among those who intended to dominate the trade in the region. However, A brother. a sister find themselves at the head of two competing fishing companies: the now rich widow, intriguing and manipulative, and the abe Strapp, violent and badly dressed.
« michael crummey’s “opponents”: fratricidal duel […] – You want my death, right? he asked, throwing him a smile.
– With all my heart.
-Me, do you see, I don’t want yours, he said, heading towards the door. He put a hand on it before adding: I hope you live a long time. And that every moment will be for you a torment as black as what you live now. »»

Mockbeggar will become the scene of their confrontation. on this small chessboard, the inhabitants are only pawns manipulated by one or the other in this incessant struggle. A game platform that storms. filibusters, famines, whips of the sea or the Labrador ice creams, regularly overthrow to relaunch the game.
Their two intendants. the sacristan Abraham Clinch for Abe Strapp and Aubrey Picco for the widow Caines, are trying somehow to stem chaos.
« […] The sacristan did not tolerate the gossip within his crew. but out of the reach michael crummey’s “opponents”: fratricidal duel of his ears, the murder of Dallen Lambe and the drowning of Seamus Fleet on the day of Saint-Patrick were amply commented. Like the widow Caines. the reprehensible outfit that she had adopted since the death of her husband, as well as the merciless scourge which had ravaged the coast and took three of them. By putting end to end all these signs. tests, the sailors came to the conclusion that they probably attended the end of the times in question in the book of the Apocalypse. »»

This is a earthy, colorful novel, full of picturesque and vigor. The Canadian is very verve. his elegant fact handles the tongue brilliantly to brush a fresco worthy of the darker Flemish naturalists: born in Newfoundland where he still lives, this writer has captivating stories to share on his native land.

With this almost door closed-door (the reader will not leave the michael crummey’s “opponents”: fratricidal duel village. will not even take the sea) the author shares with us the life of these exiles which faced a harsh and ruthless nature, in a place and a time when it was not really good to live.
Michael Crummey has managed to give life to a sacred gallery of characters from which emerges the enigmatic figure of the widow Caines. a woman who dresses as a man and for which the reader, shared between fascination and suspicion, hesitates to take up, instinctively pushed to be wary of her as much as devil in person.
Eloquent prose. fierce humor hide a very dark novel, where we do not know if chaos will be born from the madness of men or that of nature.

Bruno Ménetrier