They do fall out at times – and their occasionally petty behaviour towards each other in those moments does serve to lighten the tone a little – but for the most part they are a team and they know instinctively that they need each other to survive with any frustrations being quickly forgotten if not necessarily forgiven. Throughout the novel, they have little contact with anyone but each other, and each knows that they can rely upon the other.

The odds are against them, but I wanted them to succeed and survive. Their life is one of extreme hardship, and I was immediately invested in their tale – the author makes you care about these two characters and everything they face.

They are on a steep learning curve, and they have no choice but to adapt quickly in order to survive, falling into the roles and behaviour of their parents almost subconsciously. Neither has been educated in the usual sense of the word, yet they both have the basic skills they need to survive, fishing and foraging both to feed themselves and to enable them to trade for other supplies with The Hope – a ship that sails past their cove twice a year. They are twelve and ten respectively when their parents die, leaving them alone with no one to rely on but each other.

Siblings Evered and Ada live in a remote spot on the Newfoundland coast. I was immediately intrigued by the blurb for this novel, my attention grabbed by the idea of two children left to fend for themselves in the harshest of conditions, particularly as it’s a tale inspired by a story the author discovered when perusing local archives. Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The Innocents by Michael Crummey. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested. Muddling through the severe round of the seasons, through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but their family’s boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to help them survive. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean and a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. In centuries past, a brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated outport cove on Newfoundland’s northern coastline.

The innocents michael crummey review