Book Review :: Clear by Carys Davies
Review by Kevin Brown
Apart from the writing, very little in Carys Davies’s novel is actually clear, as she sets her story in two historical upheavals. First, there is the Great Disruption in the Scottish Church, when roughly a third of the ministers rebelled against the system of patronage. Second, the Clearances led to landowners removing entire communities of the poor in rural areas from their homes, as they sought to profit from farming, raising cattle (then mainly sheep), a reshaping of the class and literal landscape that occurred from the mid-eighteenth century well into the nineteenth.
John Ferguson, the main character, finds himself caught in both of these significant changes, as he leaves the Scottish Church to become a member of the Free Church, which doesn’t yet have buildings or an infrastructure or means to pay ministers. Thus, he accepts a job that forces him to travel hundreds of miles to a remote island, one that Davies creates as existing somewhere between Shetland and Norway. He has to remove the one remaining inhabitant, Ivar, of that island for a landlord named Lowrie.
However, before he can present Ivar with a letter informing him of the removal, as John doesn’t speak his language, John falls and seriously injures himself, leading to Ivar’s nursing him back to health, unaware of John and his mission. They develop a deep friendship, as John works to learn Ivar’s language, and Ivar realizes how much he has missed community. While John is there, his wife Mary has begun a journey to bring him home, as she fears for his life, given what has happened to other messengers of such news.
Davies’s novel is brief, and the writing is spare and straightforward, beautiful because of that concision. While she sets her characters in an important historical time, her focus is on their relationships with one another, especially how language can bring people together, even when they can’t quite communicate. She reminds readers that true community is not one without conflict, but where one can develop their true selves, even when those don’t fit the expectations society has devised to keep people in line, especially during times of historic change.
Clear by Carys Davies. Scribner, April 2024.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrite
