This was a tiny but v interesting book about a minister who is despatched to an extremely northerly island in Scotland to evict the last remaining tenant as part of the Highland Clearances. I wasn't convinced to start with, but once I pushed through the descriptions of the land and the vocabulary lists (neither of which are my thing) I was intrigued by the characterisation, the depiction of the Highland Clearances and the relationships at play. Would defos read more of Carys Davies' work.

“How is it, she thought, we never see the big things coming?”

Carys Davies novel is set against the back drop of 1840’s Scotland where the clearances of the rural population took place to remove communities through forced evictions for future plans. John, a Scottish minister takes on the difficult job of removing the last inhabitant on this Island. Ivar has lived here for decades on his own. Upon John’s arrival he has an accident that leaves him injured. Ivar finds John and helps him recover. Neither of them know each other’s language and find a way to communicate however Ivar doesn’t realise why John was sent there and when he does things take a turn.

This novel was full of heart and compassion. The author’s lyrical style amplified the vision of Scotland at this time and the ordeal the residents went through during that period of the “clearances”.

The story explores the ways in which we has humans connect. It shows how people against all odds will fight for their way of life and survive. It’s a reminder of how history has shaped where we are today.

An atmospheric novel that will leave an impression long after it’s finished.

This novel is beautifully written with exquisite evocative crafting of its setting, the thoughts of its characters and the imagery of the sea, nature and the wildlife.

The exploration of isolation and how this can happen through geography and our own choosing was profound.

Then there's the idea of loneliness and how this is different to isolation and can often be more obvious when we are with others, particularly if we feel we have damaged the relationship we have with them.

The historical setting giving insights into the church upheavals and the Clearances of Scotland were interesting and grounded in a tender love of the furthest reaches of rural Scotland and its people.

However, I did find the ending rushed and couldn't quite get on board with the resolution of the story feeling that I needed more character insights and time spent in the moments towards the end to feel more satisfied.

This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

Set in 1843, amidst the Highland Clearances where landlords sought to systematically dispossess rural Scottish people from their land and steal it for grazing livestock. The story revolves around 3 characters:

Ivar, the sole occupant of a remote island between Shetland and Norway, his family long gone, content with his meagre holdings. He is the last remaining speaker of his language.

John, an impoverished priest of the newly separated Free Church. A humble and holy man who takes on some much-needed paid work, communicating to the last remaining inhabitant of a far-flung island, that he is to be evicted.

Mary, Johns wife. A patient woman, supportive and devoted to her husband. As time goes on she becomes increasingly worried for John's safety on his errand.

Once on the island, John becomes incapacitated and finds himself at the mercy of Ivar, with a language barrier between them and an unfortunate message to somehow deliver. Unpredictable connections are forged as the deadline for Ivar's eviction rapidly approaches, meanwhile, Mary decides to take her life into her own hands.

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Beautifully atmospheric. I love remote island settings and none of the short word count was spared in bringing us there. The full nine yards, howling winds, wheeling gulls and foreboding skies.

There is little dialogue (on account of the language barrier), though much is said without being explicitly stated. I loved the exploration of Ivar's language (based on the extinct 'Norn') and how it was weaved in and used as a tool to further describe the island.

There was room perhaps to pad out some parts of the story. I felt that there was more to Mary's feelings for her friend Alice and that this may have formed the basis for her surprising decision at the end of this story. I'd love to have heard more from her. I also found the ending somewhat rushed, though it did ramp up the pace.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novella, a quiet and beautiful page-turner. If you're a fan of Claire Keegan, you'll enjoy this.

Clear is a compact novella aiming to tackle a lot of intense and emotional topics. Denys is great at bringing to life the stark reality of Ivar’s life of solitude and the quiet, brutal beauty of his isolated island. I only wish more time could’ve been devoted to a deeper plumbing of the emotions of these characters. I felt like the book was ambitious but didn’t quite achieve all it set out to do, though Denys has still created an interesting world and a story in the attempt.

Thanks to Netgalley and Granta Publications for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Clear by Carys Davies is my first five star read of the year!!!
Against the backdrop of a secluded Scottish island, this atmospheric novel explores themes of loneliness and isolation whilst delving into language as a profound means of human connection.
The narrative unfolds around John and Ivar, who, confronted by unforeseen circumstances, become dependent on one another, despite their inability to communicate in each other's language.
Beyond a captivating and beautifully written story (I cannot emphasise enough how perfect the writing is), Clear has taught me about language extinction within the Shetland Islands and has introduced me to the historical reality of the Highland Clearances, which embarrassingly, I knew nothing about.
Overall, it's perfect in every way! It's heartbreaking, atmospheric and tender. And only 120 pages long!

Davies is a terrific writer, brining out complex modern themes through an historical lens, and in the process, shining a light on a part of our collective story that, at least in England, is not well known. Wonderful.

I liked the setting and the idea of this short novel. The descriptions of nature were beautiful and I could really feel the desolation, the wind and the mist on the island. Not everything worked as well for me though. The characters were interesting, but I felt I didn’t really get to know them. I would certainly like to have learned more about Mary, who fascinated me most. Also, the development towards the end felt a bit forced to me.
Thank you Granta and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

'Clear' is a beautiful, short historical novel set on a remote Scottish island during the 1840s. John Ferguson has, like many other Church of Scotland ministers, defected to the Free Presbyterian Church in protest at the patronage rights of wealthy landowners but, struggling to make ends meet, finds himself on a mission for just such a landowner when he is sent to evict the sole inhabitant of a small island north of Shetland. However, John suffers an accident almost as soon as he arrives, and finds himself dependent on the care of Ivar, who lives alone on the island. Despite their lack of a common language, an increasingly close relationship develops between John and Ivar, as John hides the real reason for his journey to the island. Meanwhile, John's wife Mary becomes more and more anxious as she waits on the mainland for news of John.

Carys Davies stages this intimate drama between the novel's three protagonists with great tenderness, which plays out against the much bigger dramas of the Clearances and the Great Disruption in the Scottish church. The openness of the setting and the sparse dialogue seem to make space for all three characters to feel fully alive. We come to care deeply about all of them and to enjoy the sense of suspended reality as John and Ivar are alone on the island, whilst knowing that the fragile peace they find together cannot last. But despite the feeling of foreboding that builds during the second half of the novel, the novel's ending is surprisingly hopeful.

Not a word is wasted in this excellent and totally absorbing novel. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review!

If like me – and many others - you felt that two of the very strongest books on the 2022 Booker longlist were “Small Things Like These” and “The Colony” then this will I think be a book you savour.

It is the fourth novel by Carys Davies – whose previous novels have received strong media recognition (her last “The Mission House” was the Sunday Times 2020 Novel of the Year) but no Women’s Prize or Booker recognition – at least until now.

As explained in an excellent Author’s note – the book draws on two historical occurrences: the Great Disruption/Disruption of 1843 when a group of some 450-500 evangelical ministers broke away from the established Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland – the main issue in the schism being their resistance to the right of large landowners to award clerical positions on parishes on their estates.

The Lowland and then Highland clearances from the mid 18th to mid 19th centuries as the same landowners systematically cleared smallhold-tenants and the rural poor from their land to replace them with large scale (particularly sheep) farming.

The set up of the book is that one such breakaway minister – John Ferguson – newly impoverished and struggling to work out the economics of his new church (having resigned his paid position) agrees to a job for a landowner (his brother-in-law’s godfather – whose estate have been hitherto laggards in enacting clearances) to travel to a remote Orkney island, survey its suitability for sheep farming and persuade its one remaining inhabitant.

When John first lands on the island and stays in the abandoned Baillie’s cottage (equipped with a crude Scots/English speech, a translated gospel on which he is working, a gun he neither knows or wants to know how to use, and a beloved calotype of his equally beloved wife Mary) – he has an accident on his first day falling off one of the cliffs and is rescued by the person he has come to remove – Ivar – who takes him back to his house and nurses him.

The isolated Ivar (the island’s other inhabitants all having left and even the rent visits from the landowner’s factor having ceased) who had never really thought of himself as lonely and was happy with the company of his horse Pegi - first encounters the picture of Mary and develops deep feelings for her.

So when he two days later finds the unconscious John his initial reaction is confused (as he quickly realises she is his wife) and he hides the photo ………. but as John gradually regains consciousness Ivar realises that his feelings have transferred.

‘I have the cliffs and the skerries and the birds. I have the white hill and the round hill and the peaked hill. I have the clear spring water and the rich good pasture that covers the tilted top of the island like a blanket. I have the old black cow and the sweet grass that grows between the rocks, I have my great chair and my sturdy house. I have my spinning wheel and I have the teapot and I have Pegi, and now, amazingly, I have John Ferguson too.’

And the two form a gradual bond – John trying to suppress in his mind the real truth behind why he came to the Island (he realises that at absolute worst Ivar thinks he has come for rent) and put off the ultimate reckoning when a boat will come to collect him and his evacuee. John is fascinated by Ivar’s Norn tongue with its hugely specialised terms for seas, mists and fogs and the two are able to communicate more and more as time goes on while also drawing emotionally closer.

Meanwhile Mary has always been concerned over John’s acceptance of the job. First on moral grounds – John justifying the clear contradiction between the reasons for joining the free church and his dubious assistance to the very same landowners by a “Render unto Caesar” argument. And then on safety grounds – as she picks up that the landowner’s factor is concerned Ivar may prove violent – and she decides to find a ship that will take her to the Island to bring John home.

In pure word-length terms we learn little of Mary, John and Ivar’s backstory but in practice Davies has a Keeganite ability to summon up a life in only a few sentences.

My only hesitation in an otherwise very strong novel is the speed at which a John still suffering presumably from some after effects of concussion (note that cleverly Davies has John imagining his surgeon friend reacting to what has happened to him “Well, for a start, being a great reader, he would probably have complained about the fashion beloved by the worst kind of contemporary novelists for inflicting catastrophic and prolonged memory loss on their characters–very likely he would have called it a cheap plot device to complicate an already complicated series of events.”) – events that would seem to require months take place over around 3 weeks – but given the depth of Davies research (the catalyst for the book being an early 20th Century Norn dictionary) I suspect this element has been carefully considered also. It did however cause me to feel temporarily taken out of a novel which I think is best read in a single immersive sitting.

During the whole novel, the pistol that John bought with him casts as Chekhovian shadow over the plot, and given current literary trends the direction of John and Ivar’s relationship is both inevitable and perhaps (at least on John’s side) the other unconvincing aspects of an otherwise very authentic tale.

But the way in which Davies navigates both aspects and brings the book to closure is extremely impressive.

Highly recommended.

Set against the stunning background of a remote Scottish island, a hapless and impoverished minister is sent to remove Ivar, the last inhabitant, who has lived in solitude there for decades since the infamous Scottish clearances.
His unexpected and startling arrival sets off an unexpected chain of events and after a series of misunderstandings, with no common language, Ivar and the minister John Ferguson, develop an sensitive and tender connection over time, meanwhile John's no-nonsense and pioneering wife, Mary determines to come to his rescue.
Woven through with black humour and fascinating strands of social history, this is such a beautiful, quiet gem of a novel.

My deep and abiding love for Carys Davies' work continues. Clear is everything I hoped for - a simple but compelling story, characters I felt sympathy for, a stunning piece of historical fiction. Carys Davies never disappoints me.

Clear tells the story of John Ferguson, his wife Mary, and an islander called Ivar whose lives intersect when Ferguson is sent to Ivar's tiny island between Norway and the Shetlands to tell him he must leave.

The story is set during a tumultuous time in Scotland - the Clearances of huge swathes of land as the landowners forced tenants off the land to make way for more profitable pursuits. Ferguson is also a church man who, like others, had split from the Church of Scotland to form the new Free Church.

It's a huge subject to tackle but Carys Davies effortlessly makes it about the characters - their hopes, dreams and loves.

Suffice to say if you loved her previous work you will love this and if you haven't read any before then I highly recommend this beautiful, short, perfectly formed novel.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Granta Publications for the advance review copy. It was well worth the wait since Mission House.

The story is a little unusual as it is a historical novel based during a fairly turbulent time in the Scottish protestant Church.
Wasn't really sure I would enjoy it and to be honest it was a little unusual but I did enjoy it overall.
There is a bit of a twist at the end which was quite good.
If you like historical dramas then this is definitely worth a look.

It's a familiar story - someone is to be forcibly removed from their land and the person tasked to do it is changed during their contact with them.
Carys Davies' short 180 page story focuses on the shameful clearances in Scotland that had rich landowners remove tenants from their land so they could profit more by sheep farming. John Ferguson is the clergyman, needing some cash to set up his own breakaway church, who travels to a remote island between Scotland and Scandanavia where the only inhabitants are Ivar, a horse, a cow and a few mangy chickens.
After John has an accident, a bond builds between the two men as he is nursed back to health and learns to communicate with Ivar through his native Norn language.
The relationship, the tough existence on the island and the natural world around them is brought to immersive detail in the novel. And as John's true purpose and his wife's imminent arrival in search of him threaten to break up their friendship, I became quite anxious and didn't want it to end.
A recommended read for fans of Sarah Moss or Benjamin Myers.

A tale of two men who come together on a remote Scottish island - but Ivar is unaware that John Ferguson has been sent to evict him. As Ivar shares his language, food and way of life, John’s secret becomes a burden that hangs over them both. An atmospheric and tender story, rooted in history.

This couldve been a great novel had it been a bit longer. The writing is great, the characters were interesting (although I felt like the wife character was a bit shoehorned into the story), but everything just happened so quickly. I would've liked to linger more on the important moments, to dwell a little longer on them.

I am a fan of Carys Davies books and really enjoyed the ones I have read. This one set on a remote Scottish Island in the 1840s is no exception , I thought is was brilliant. It’s a short novel but not a word is wasted. John , a Scottish minister goes to the island to evict Ivan the only remaining inhabitant. What follows is a story of friendship, loneliness , survival and a love of nature. I was so touched by the relationship John and Ivar had, the determination to understand each other and communicate. The island is so remote and you can feel the isolation and the love Ivar has for his surroundings. This is set in the time when the poor from rural Scotland where forced to leave their homes, and the determination of the inhabitants to stay . It is a moving, touching novel that I will read again and again .

WOW! It is rare to encounter a novel like this: Shimmering prose, well constructed characters and interesting subject
A fable like novella that goes to very core of the human connection and its limits.

Clear takes place in 1843 the Scottish church disrupted and 474 ministers rebbeled against the system of patronage, one of them is our revered John Ferguson who finds himself in difficult situation: to start from the scratch without any money or support. This situation led him to accept the job of evicting the last its remaining occupant of a remote island beyond the Shetland: Ivar. However the mission doesn't go as it was planned and turned into a self discovery journey for the two of them

Carys's narration is powerful and dense and the story unfolds gracefully. This novel will linger within you for a long time.

An absolutely beautiful story...thanks to Netgalley & publisher for letting me read the eArc pre the publication date.

It's a stunning blend of the 'clearing' theme frim the Booker 23 Shortlist 'This Other Eden' by Paul Harding & the culture, language & visitor themes from Booker 22 Longlist 'The Colony' by Audrey Magee.

However, I thought Carys' story was so much beautiful than both of the Booker books... she so softly captures the deeper emotions of the 2 men involved, from very different backgrounds & cultures. She describes the man living on the island so kindly & didn't use the descriptions of the island community Paul Harding used, which led me to DNF his Booker book.

I loved the language learning, how they cared for each other...it felt like the characters blended into one. The challenge of 'clearing' the island was removed by the love & wanting to share their their lives, despite the challenges this would bring to them.

When I finished reading, I felt like I do after reading Clare Keegan's beautiful short stories. I can see how Carys also capture individual characters, deep emotions & presents these to us so beautifully, that you miss them when you put the book down when finished.

I will definitely be following the authors other writing & would read her books when need to settle a busy mind & life, to remember what it's all about really.

Will recommend this to everyone, is a story I am sure I will not forget.

Left reviews on Goodreads, Storygraph, Patreon on Bookclub Review Podcast, Instagram via social media ref HappyKnitter2020 & will leave further reviews on Amazon & Waterstones.

Clear takes place in 1843, at the time of the Great Disruption in the Scottish Church, where a third of Scottish ministers broke away to form a new Free Church of Scotland.
It was also the time of the clearances, where whole rural communities were forcibly removed from their homes by the landowners to make way for crops and livestock.

John Ferguson, one of the new Free Church ministers is trying to establish a church in his own parish but lacks the finances to do so. In order to make money quickly, he takes on a job of travelling to a remote Scottish Island to clear its last remaining inhabitant.
But he has an accident on his very first day and is rescued by Ivar (the last inhabitant). As Ivar nurses John back to health, their relationship strengthens (despite them not being able to speak each other’s language)and John finds that he cannot bear to let Ivar know of his real reason for his appearance on the island.

I was taken aback by the beauty of this book. The setting, Ivar’s solitary existence and the growing relationship between the men. I was as fascinated as John, to learn the intricacies of Ivar’s language (Norn - once spoken on the islands of Orkney and Shetland). And I was interested to find out about the Great Disruption and the Clearances.
Clear was quite a short book, but I could have very happily keep reading, so strong was my connection to the characters.