Publishers Weekly
★ 01/15/2024
A minister’s conscience is tested in the perceptive and beautiful latest from Davies (The Mission House). In 1847 Scotland, John Fergusen has recently broken from the Church of Scotland as part of a movement to form the Free Church, which aims to be independent from the influence of landowners. It’s also lacking in funds and unable to pay salaries to its leaders. John and his wife Mary are now impoverished, and he contracts with a landowner for £16 to perform an unsavory errand on a remote island. His task, which flies in the face of his purported principles, is to arm himself with a gun and evict the island’s sole remaining tenant, Ivar, so the land can be cleared for sheep. In alternating chapters from the points of view of Ivar, John, and Mary, Davies gradually unfurls the story of John’s calamitous arrival on the island, which involves a near-fatal fall from a cliff; his unexpected friendship with Ivar, who nurses him back to health; and Mary’s concern about John’s safety, which prompts her to board a steamer and come to his rescue. Davies cranks a great deal of tension into the economical plot—as the weeks pass, the reader wonders if John will finally tell Ivar why he’s there, whether the gun will ever go off, and how Mary’s impending arrival will affect the two men. Moreover, each page blooms with wondrous descriptions of the untamed highlands (“Now and then a long smudge of rain in the distance screened the sun, sending its illumination down onto a band of water along the horizon before it burst through again and lit up the pasture”). This is divine. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
"It’s hard to overstate how deftly and viscerally Davies’s prose conveys this world. We see and hear and smell it, shiver with it."
—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
“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
"[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
"[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
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2024-01-20
A minister is sent to evict the last inhabitant of an isolated island in the North Sea.
It’s 1843, and two major upheavals are roiling Scotland. First, the barbaric Clearances, in which landowners replace their “impoverished, unreliable tenants” with profitable occupants like sheep, have finally made their way to Scotland’s austere northern islands. Second, one-third of Scotland’s Presbyterian ministers have revolted against landowner-controlled church appointments—and consequently deprived themselves of any income. Reverend John Ferguson is one of these suddenly impoverished ministers, which is why he agrees to voyage 400 miles into the North Sea to evict a barren island’s sole remaining tenant. Armed with a pistol and a calotype image of his wife, Mary, John is dropped off and told that the boat will return in a month. He’s barely there a day, however, when he falls off a cliff and is rescued by Ivar, the lonely man he’s there to remove. The two men do not share a language, but while Ivar tends John’s wounds and teaches him words like leura (“a period of short, unreliable quiet between storms”), he finds himself increasingly attracted to John…who is too ashamed to admit that he’s come to kick Ivar out of his home. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, Mary learns something about this particular clearance that causes her to set off in search of her husband. Will John come to reciprocate Ivar’s more-than-filial feelings? Will Ivar leave peacefully? Will John’s hidden pistol bring the leura to a harsh and sudden end? With her characteristically buoyant prose and brisk sense of plotting, Davies crafts a humane tale about individuals struggling to maintain dignity beneath competing systems of disenfranchisement. But while a lesser author might allow their characters to be terminally lashed by these historical travesties, Davies infuses John, Mary, and Ivar with refreshingly fantastical levels of creativity and grace, which helps them find a startling new way to avert disaster.
A deft and graceful yarn about language, love, and rebellion against the inhumane forces of history.
