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Clear: A Novel Hardcover – April 2, 2024
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One of Vogue’s Best Books of the Year
A “daring and necessary…sophisticated and playful” (The New York Times) novel from an award-winning writer, Clear is the story of a minister dispatched to a remote island to “clear” its last remaining inhabitant—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.
John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted.
Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. “Clear chronicles the surprising bond that develops between these two men…pack[ing] a great deal of power into a compact tale” (The Wall Street Journal) about connection, home, and hope—in which John begins to learn Ivar’s language, and Ivar sees himself reflected through the eyes of another person for the first time in decades.
Unfolding during the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances—a period of the 19th century which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions—this singular novel explores what binds us together in the face of insurmountable difference, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can endure despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, “a love letter to the scorching power of language” (The Guardian), Clear is “a jewel of a novel” (The Washington Post)—a profound and unforgettable read.
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherScribner
- Publication dateApril 2, 2024
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.7 x 8.38 inches
- ISBN-101668030667
- ISBN-13978-1668030660
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From the Publisher
![Clear](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/aplus-media-library-service-media/12dbac9a-df68-4d1a-8b61-822cb7a5d084.__CR0,0,970,300_PT0_SX970_V1___.png)
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—The Washington Post
"Daring and necessary...the storytelling is sophisticated and playful... Clear contemplates fictional resuscitations, opening itself, and its readers, to the ghosts of lost ideas."
—The New York Times
"A love letter to the scorching power of language, a power that Davies has long understood. She writes with amazing economy: in a few words she can summon worlds… Davies is a writer of immense talent and deep humanity, capable of balancing devastating audacity with equally devastating restraint."
—The Guardian
"[A] gripping novel from Welsh novelist Carys Davis, Clear...feels a bit like a thriller set against a history lesson rendered fantastically vivid...raising questions of belonging, ownership, and how we forge the bonds between people and place that are really durable."
—Vogue
“In sparse but often gorgeous prose, Clear chronicles the surprising bond that develops between these two men, first through Ivar’s tender ministrations to the injured stranger...Ms. Davies manages to pack a great deal of power into her compact tale.”
—The Wall Street Journal
"There is great pleasure to be found of Davies’s clear and calm prose, her wry asides and deep love of language, and in the book’s quiet optimism. It is a slim, masterfully carved gem of a story that you won’t easily forget: slip it into your pocket."
—Evening Standard
"Davies’ characteristically nimble evocation of place is in evidence throughout… Amid the barbarity of mass evictions, with all their modern resonances, Davies ultimately offers us a story that is hopeful and humane."
—Irish Times
"A lucid and stylish prose writer, Davies is excellent at revealing characters through the language they use and through the gestures and tonal shifts that betray their weaknesses, their prejudices and hollow sentiments… what Clear asks of us in its final pages is a leap of faith more usual in fables and fairy tales – there is also something gratifying in the suggestion, however unlikely, that love, even love of the most improbable kind, can still blossom in a world run by men like Lowrie and Strachan."
—Times Literary Supplement
"Another epic in miniature. Davies manages to pack in more drama and nuance into 160 pages than other authors manage in novels twice that length."
—The Spectator
"Her own language is a marvel of eloquent restraint."
—The Observer
"Wonderfully atmospheric writing."
—Sunday Times
"Painterly...Her grasp of historical mood rarely falters, and each scene is set with minimal description, leaving space for the reader’s imagination … Clear is a memorable and beautifully told tale"
—Scottish Herald
"[Davies] writes epics in miniature…a tender, humane book."
—Times (London)
“This is a gem of a novel that shines with tenderness and courage, and shimmers with the love of a long-lost language… Davies deftly spins out the tension of the situation while delicately describing the developing comradeship between the two men. Sublime.”
—Daily Mail
“Historical fact can often lack tangible emotion, but here Davies fills in great swathes of it with the most minimalist of brush-strokes. What she has produced is an atmospheric marvel, because as spare and pared-down as Clear is, it overflows with all the fundamentals of humanity: life, love, connection, empathy. Her characters are so vividly alive, so full of feeling that you can almost hear their hearts pounding.”
—i Newspaper
“Clear keeps the reader on tenterhooks; the ending is both unexpected and satisfying… [Davies has a] rare sense of openness, balance and compassion and a finely-tuned ear. Her books powerfully evoke a sense of place.”
—Country and Town House
“The magic is in Davies’s handling of her material. She packs a huge amount in…and never says more than is needed… To deliver an epic story in miniature like this–in fewer than 150 pages–is an exceptional achievement.”
—The Critic
“A gem of a novel…, a perfectly pitched tale of human connection set at the intersection of two of Scotland’s greatest historic social upheavals… Davies neatly reveals the dilemmas facing each of her protagonists in prose that’s lucid and faultlessly paced… Clear is something to savour.”
—New Zealand Herald
“[A] great, sturdy piece of writing, from a writer who deserves a lot more attention, who has been steadily creating terrific novels and short stories for years, and Clear is as good a place as any to hop on board.”
—Bookmunch
"A humane tale about individuals struggling to maintain dignity beneath competing systems of disenfranchisement...A deft and graceful yarn about language, love, and rebellion against the inhumane forces of history."
—Kirkus (starred review)
"Perceptive and beautiful...blooms with wondrous descriptions of the untamed highlands...this is divine"
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Spare and beautiful…A concise and haunting novel of souls anchored to the consequences of willfully circumscribed lives.”
—Booklist (starred review)
"The sheer beauty of Clear—with its perfect sentences, its austere tenderness, and its quiet sense of disquiet—feels timeless ... A poignant, profound depiction of both solitude and connection. Carys Davies has written a masterful, discreetly sublime book."
—Hernan Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust and In the Distance
“This intriguing and inventive story escorts the reader to an unexpectedly joyous ending that hints at our contemporary interest in new ideas of what a family might be. The writing style is one of clarity and reserved sensibility punctuated with an end-game needle jab. Not to be missed.”
—Annie Proulx, author of Barkskins
“Clear is a compact, taut and brilliant novel with an ingenious premise: one man is sent to evict another from his land, but suddenly requires the second man’s aid. Everything gets more complicated from there. The book is about belonging, a dying language, secrets, and a pistol in a box. I loved every page.”
—Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land
"Clear is a love letter to a vanished way of life, to a landscape, and to human relationships. Captivating, tender, and satisfying, this is a novel to be savoured."
—Claire Fuller, author of Bitter Orange and The Memory of Animals
"A wonderfully humane and moving depiction of loneliness and the connections forged between strangers that transcend all barriers, even language."
—Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures
"With Clear, Carys Davies has again done brilliantly what she does best - saying most by saying least. She has the rare gift of eloquent brevity — Clear is astute, moving, unexpected."
—Penelope Lively, author of The Family Garden and Life in the Garden
“An exquisite, hopeful masterpiece ... my favorite book of 2024 and probably many more years to come.”
—Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson's Beetle and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
"Tender, riveting and inventive is Clear, the newest offering and masterpiece from the brilliant Carys Davies. It will take your breath away… What a thrill."
—Sarah Jessica Parker
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Scribner (April 2, 2024)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1668030667
- ISBN-13 : 978-1668030660
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.38 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #28,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #261 in Historical British & Irish Literature
- #2,899 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #3,616 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
![Carys Davies](https://cdn.statically.io/img/m.media-amazon.com/images/S/amzn-author-media-prod/m4g4vbbma0ojoab5v7mg8jgvn6._SY600_.jpg)
www.carysdavies.net
Carys Davies’s debut novel West (2018) was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, runner up for the Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction. Her second novel The Mission House was first published in the UK in 2020 where it was The Sunday Times 2020 Novel of the Year.
She is also the author of two collections of short stories, Some New Ambush and The Redemption of Galen Pike, which won the 2015 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She is the recipient of the Royal Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Short Story Award, a Northern Writers’ Award, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, and is a member of the Folio Academy. Her fiction has been translated into nine languages.
Born in Wales, she grew up there and in the Midlands, lived and worked for twelve years in New York and Chicago, and now lives in Edinburgh.
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"...and of dispossession of tenant farmers, is well-written and interesting...." Read more
"Such gorgeous prose and such a lovely story about three lonely people. I could never have imagined such a surprising ending, brought about by love...." Read more
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"...A book that is worth reading, for sure." Read more
"This was a delightful read. Beautifully written with vivid imagery and a sweet, if somewhat somber tale. I look forward to reading Davies again." Read more
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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.
It’s 1843, Scotland. Recently married and impoverished Reverend John Ferguson has been offered the job of traveling to an island somewhere between the Shetlands and the coast of Norway to clear the land from its only inhabitant— a giant of a man who hasn’t paid rent in years— to make way for a thousand sheep to graze, unattended, year-round on the island. As a recent arrival, Ferguson accidentally falls from the cliffs overlooking the beach and is tended back to health by Ivar, the man he has come to evict. But as Ferguson recovers he forges a bond with Ivar that will jeopardize the job he has come to complete.
The year that this novel takes place in is only alluded indirectly by mentioning the separation of the Free Church of Scotland from the established Church of Scotland, which occurred through the Disruption of 1843. The Clearances—the act by which Scottish landowners evicted their poor tenants to clear the land for raising cattle— another historical event having happened during a period of approximately fifty years, is a focus of the story as well.
Through an easy to read, third person narration, Clear focuses on the characters John Ferguson and Ivar, occasionally allowing minor characters to enrich and inform the story as well. The atmosphere is inescapable as this book takes place in a bucolic, remote island where nature and the fight for survival are everyday challenges. It’s through ordinary, daily interactions that an indissoluble bond is formed between these men from entirely different backgrounds. Clear is then a story of deception, greed, faith, loneliness, loss, survival, friendship against all odds, and the much human hunger for companionship.
Steeped in history and chock-full with humanity and pathos, Clear is one of those subtle narratives that invite further reflection and discussion.
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.
Top reviews from other countries
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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
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