Clear: A Novel

This novel, set in Scotland during a time of church upheaval and of dispossession of tenant farmers, is well-written and interesting. I have some issues with the ending, but in the interests of no spoilers, I won’t go into detail. A book that is worth reading, for sure.

Two significant events of 19th century Scottish history form the backdrop to “Clear,” the wonderful and moving novel by British author Carys Davies. The first is the Disruption of 1843, when evangelicals broke with the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland. The second is the second wave of what’s known as the Highland Clearances, when the great landowners of Scotland realized they could make more money from sheep than from tenant farmers – and drove them off the land.John Ferguson is a Church of Scotland minister who joins the dissenting and departing ministers. The problem he faces is financial – how to support himself and his wife Mary until the new church is a going concern. Mary’s brother-in-law prevails upon a landowner to give John a position.The job has one duty. John must travel to an island in the North Sea between Shetland and Norway and evict the last remaining tenant, a bear of a man named Ivar who leads something of a hardscrabble life with a few sheep, a blind cow, and an old horse. Ivar doesn’t speak English; his language is something between Gaelic and Norwegian. So Ferguson’s first need is to talk to a teacher in Lerwick who is said to know Ivar’s language.The man doesn’t know the language, but John presses onward, finally reaching the island. His boat transportation will return in a month. He has to somehow explain to Ivar what is happening and convince him to leave.John sets up in the baillie or old manager;’ house and then finds a spring to take a bath. He accidentally falls down a cliff and loses consciousness. Ivar finds him and carries him back to his own hut. Unconscious for days, John eventually regains consciousness and slowly recovers from his injuries. In the meantime, the two men have to find a way to communicate, and John has to explain what is to happen.The story centers on the relationship the two men begin to build, and the words they teach each other. Back in Scotland, Mary begins to worry about how ill-prepared her husband was to undertake the assignment, and she decides to join him.The story of the three is simply and beautifully told. Davies has a gift for placing the reader as a silent observer, experiencing the feelings, emotions, and growing affection the characters have for each other.Davies has previously published the novels “West” and “The Mission House” and two short story collections, “Some New Ambush” and “The Redemption of Golden Pike.” Her novels and stories have received numerous awards, prizes, and recognitions, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. A native of Wales, she grew up there and in England, and she now lives in Edinburgh.And with “Clear,” she’s written a terrific story.

“She knew what he was going to say before he said it: that this had nothing to do with the patronage question; that surveying a small island and seeing to the transfer of its last remaining inhabitant to a new and more suitable location was a purely economic errand; that it had nothing to do with rich men doling out clerical livings and generally meddling with the spiritual independence of the Church; that the land was Lowrie’s and he had every right to organize it as he saw fit.” (p46)The setup is perfect.Start with historical context -- an important and tragic nineteenth century social issue worthy of serious attention. Introduce the protagonist -- a person of character whose real, quite reasonable family needs conflict somewhat with his core principles. Stir in circumstances that lead him to compromise those principles in a seemingly modest way. Make it all a bit ambiguous, so the protagonist, while guileless, is willfully blind to the weakness of the arguments supporting his potential compromise. Reveal the reactions of people in his inner circle – some view all this as appalling, others as little more than eyebrow-raising, and still others as much ado about nothing. Don’t forget to highlight the self-interest of those who encourage the compromise.Finally (and this is no spoiler), in a moment of peril, throw in an encounter with an enigmatic “stranger” or “other,” and have the protagonist experience nothing but profound, overwhelming kindness. Now you’ve got yourself a quiet but real moral crisis, and at least the possibility of an epiphany. Or a reckoning. Or both.But the follow-through left me frustrated. The author does very little with the premise. In a climax that feels rushed, she takes the story in an odd direction. And she never really looks closely at the essential moral problem in which the protagonist becomes entangled. I’m tempted to call it a bait-and-switch, but it feels more like the author lost interest in what she’d started.

We imagine a man like Ivar to be driven by survival but we discover the depths of his humanity and pathos as he cares for and nurtures John, a supposed man of the cloth on a mission to upend Ivar’s life. A good read!!

This is a remarkable novel, written in extraordinary and beautiful language. It is a perfectly constructed story with nothing extraneous and everything fitting together—in other words, a gem. Carys Davies has a true and compassionate understanding of human nature.

As a person who has worked for a Scottish company for almost 2 decades, I often find myself wandering a bookstore in Scotland and I’m surprised by how many books get published there and never really make it across the pond. This one caught my eye as being something that I would enjoy. It focuses on the single inhabitant of a remote island and the pastor from the mainland who is sent to get him to vacate the island. Neither speak the other’s language and they both obviously want different outcomes. But when the pasture is injured, he is generously cared for by the stranger. Through their time together, they come to understand and empathize with one another.This is very much a quiet contemplative novel. The atmosphere is overwhelming, and the characters are deep and nuanced. And while it is short, you will find yourself thinking about and debating both sides.Read this one if you liked Metronome or Where the World Ends.

wonderful descriptive writing

I thought this was going to be a gem of a book and in several aspects it is. The writing is lovely and lyrical and although this is a short novel the author takes her time to turn the protagonists into believable characters and to paint an evocative picture of the remote little island between the Shetlands and Norway in all its different moods depending on the season, the wind and the weather.Ivar, a Norn-speaking man, seems to be the only resident left in this harsh place. His only company are his pony Pegi and an old blind cow (I wonder why he doesn’t have a dog) but if he is lonely he doesn’t think about it. When he isn’t working hard he is cooking his frugal meals or sitting in his big chair by the fire in his simple cottage, knitting or spinning. He is a tenant farmer eking out a living with a few chickens, some sheep, fishing from the rocks, planting barley etc. The estate owner’s agent, who used to show up once a year to be paid off in wrack, feathers or whatever Ivar had to give him hasn’t been seen for several years but one day Ivar comes across a satchel soaked in sea water and later finds the man it belongs to lying injured and unconscious on the rocks.I loved the story for its calmness and simplicity and the lovely pictures the author paints but the inexplicably rushed ending came as a rude shock. The dilemma the three protagonists find themselves in and the way they resolve it will change their lives forever and I felt let down by the simplistic, unconvincing denouement of the story.

I am about two thirds of the way through “Clear” and apprehensive both about how the story will turn out and that this marvellous story will end soon and I will be left in the vacuum of reader without a great story.The prose is pure and beautiful, and reminds me times of the best of D H Lawrence - insofar as the descriptions of natural settings and the minutiae of small gestures and intimacies. I believe there is so much more going on underneath the story in terms of how language can connect and disconnect and people have to seek other avenues for establishing meaning, both between strangers and persons in a relationship, and isolation whether it is one person living a solitary life or a married couple. But - unlike a lot of current fiction that can push formula to much - Carys Davies does not let this shadow her people and their struggles to belong and achieve some kind of meaning in their lives and landscape however those are defined. Simply marvellous.

I come from the Northern Isles so I was attracted to the subject of this novel: in the mid-nineteenth century a minister takes on the task of removing the last inhabitant from a small island. The three main characters - the minister , his wife and the islander are interesting individuals. It's a short, gripping read which cleverly avoids the expected ending.

"Clear" by Carys Davies is a short novel (or rather a novella) of about 150 pages and a historical fiction novel. It is set in the time of the so-called "Highland Clearances" in Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the rural population was evicted from their land by their landlords in order to make way for crops, cattle and sheep in particular.The story is told from three perspectives, that of Ivar, the sole inhabitant of a tiny and isolated island off the Scottish coast, that of John, a poor church minister, who has split from the Scottish Church in order to help set up the new Free Church and is now sent out to Ivar's island to evict him, and that of Mary, John's wife, who is left behind on the mainland, fearing for her husband's safety.Ivar has been living in isolation and solitude for many years, living off what the island provides, when one day he finds John unconscious and seriously injured on the beach. It is Ivar's first encounter with a human being in years. While he nurses John back to health in his small hut, he realizes how beautiful and satisfying it is to have company and to care for someone else. Despite the language barrier (Ivar speaks a Scottish dialect that has become almost extinct), John and Ivar learn to communicate and slowly begin to trust each other. John starts to admire the man he has to move from his home and catches himself wishing that he didn't have to do so and instead could stay on the island with him. But things take a turn when Ivar finds out the reason why John has really come to the island.Meanwhile Mary, who worries that John might be in danger, sets out for the island on her own...This is really an amazing book, beautifully written in lyric prose with characters you will remember for a long time. The author has managed to create a vivid setting so that the readers can imagine that tiny island in the middle of nowhere with all their senses. The novella is about loneliness, isolation, friendship, love, kindness, compassion and resilience. I especially felt drawn to Mary since she is described as a very courageous, warm-hearted and strong woman, who makes a decision at the end of the book that really, really surprised me and made me admire her even more.I will definitely look out for more books from this author and would like to highly recommend "Clear" to everyone who is into this kind of fiction!4.5/5 stars