Review: Clear by Carys Davies

I fell in love with Carys Davies' writing when I read her short story collection, The Redemption of Galen Pike, many years ago and I'd always meant to read more of her work but somehow never did until now. Her newest novel, Clear, is impressive, quiet, and an almost indescribable work of beauty.

John Ferguson is a Presbyterian minister who has chosen, with many others, to break away from his church and to protest the practice of wealthy landowners having the power to appoint ministers. His rebellion against the established church leaves him and his wife, Mary, destitute though, so in an effort to earn a small amount of money, John agrees to take on the task of evicting the sole tenant left on a remote Scottish island in the waning years of the Scottish Clearances. But this is not the uncomplicated and easy assignment that the devout John envisions and his life will never be the same.

Opening with John sighting the forbidding island and lamenting his lack of swimming ability, it is clear that what he is facing will challenge and test him. Once he has landed on the island, he takes up residence in the old Baillie house and starts to explore his surroundings before trying to make contact with Ivar, the only remaining inhabitant of the island, and the man he is there to evict. When John meets with an accident and Ivar rescues him, the two men cannot communicate, each speaking a language very far removed from the other. Each man keeps secrets from the other even as John starts to learn Ivar's language and ultimately those secrets will change everything.

All three major characters, John, Ivar, and John's wife Mary, come into focus as the narrative moves back and forth amongst them, telling their histories as well as the history of the Clearances and of the rift in the Presbyterian Church. Davies is a spare writer, evoking much in few words. As the reader would expect on a remote and forbidding island, landscape and nature dominates in this haunting work. The characters drive the story along as they mirror the bleakness of the world around them. This is a spectacular, quiet novel of loneliness, connection, love, and the importance of shared language; a novel to be savored.