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A Novel
by Carys Davies
Book Reviewed by:A stunning, exquisite novel from an award-winning writer about a minister dispatched to a remote island off of Scotland to "clear" the last remaining inhabitant, who has no intention of leaving—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. The two men do not speak a common language, but as John builds a dictionary of Ivar's world, they learn to communicate and, as Ivar sees himself for the first time in decades reflected through the eyes of another person, they build a fragile, unusual connection.
Unfolding in the 1840s in the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances—which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions—this singular, beautiful, deeply surprising novel explores the differences and connections between us, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can survive despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, sensitive and spellbinding, Clear is a profound and pleasurable read.
Ivar has lived alone for decades; the Highland Clearances, a series of mass evictions that began a century earlier, have already forced his family from the land. But if Scottish history would have him for another victim, Clear deftly upends the usual narrative. Soon after arrival, John slips on the craggy coastline; Ivar, discovering his unconscious body, takes it upon himself to patch the minister up. An obsession with language drives this slim yet gripping novel. Ivar speaks Norn, an island relative of Danish and Norwegian on the brink of extinction. To John, it's a language uniquely suited to the unforgiving surroundings; what he would call simply "a rough sea," Ivar terms "skreul," "pulter," or "yog," depending on the peculiarities of the roughness. Language is an apt theme for an author who wields it so masterfully. Clear's chapters, each a brief, poetic vignette, are lessons in what can be achieved with spare, finely-wrought sentences. Davies is a writer with a painter's sensibility. Like the best landscape paintings, her scenes are precise in their detail and expansive in their scope; and like the best landscape painters, she has a rare sensitivity to the natural world...continued
Full Review
(658 words)
(Reviewed by Alex Russell).
In Clear, the third novel from Carys Davies, an impoverished presbyterian minister reluctantly takes part in the Highland Clearances, a series of mass evictions that took place in the north of Scotland between 1750 and 1850, driven in part by the restructuring of British society during the Industrial Revolution and the collapse of the traditional clan system that had for centuries governed Highland life. The impact on Scotland was profound—and the aftershocks still felt to this day. As the historian Tom Devine has written, the events have become "firmly embedded in the cultural identity of the nation."
The Clearances broadly took place over two waves. During the first, which lasted from around 1750 to 1815, Highland landowners ...
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