Clear: A Novel

Two significant events of 19th century Scottish history form the backdrop to “Clear,” the wonderful and moving novel by British author Carys Davies. The first is the Disruption of 1843, when evangelicals broke with the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland. The second is the second wave of what’s known as the Highland Clearances, when the great landowners of Scotland realized they could make more money from sheep than from tenant farmers – and drove them off the land.

John Ferguson is a Church of Scotland minister who joins the dissenting and departing ministers. The problem he faces is financial – how to support himself and his wife Mary until the new church is a going concern. Mary’s brother-in-law prevails upon a landowner to give John a position.

The job has one duty. John must travel to an island in the North Sea between Shetland and Norway and evict the last remaining tenant, a bear of a man named Ivar who leads something of a hardscrabble life with a few sheep, a blind cow, and an old horse. Ivar doesn’t speak English; his language is something between Gaelic and Norwegian. So Ferguson’s first need is to talk to a teacher in Lerwick who is said to know Ivar’s language.

The man doesn’t know the language, but John presses onward, finally reaching the island. His boat transportation will return in a month. He has to somehow explain to Ivar what is happening and convince him to leave.

John sets up in the baillie or old manager;’ house and then finds a spring to take a bath. He accidentally falls down a cliff and loses consciousness. Ivar finds him and carries him back to his own hut. Unconscious for days, John eventually regains consciousness and slowly recovers from his injuries. In the meantime, the two men have to find a way to communicate, and John has to explain what is to happen.

The story centers on the relationship the two men begin to build, and the words they teach each other. Back in Scotland, Mary begins to worry about how ill-prepared her husband was to undertake the assignment, and she decides to join him.

The story of the three is simply and beautifully told. Davies has a gift for placing the reader as a silent observer, experiencing the feelings, emotions, and growing affection the characters have for each other.

Davies has previously published the novels “West” and “The Mission House” and two short story collections, “Some New Ambush” and “The Redemption of Golden Pike.” Her novels and stories have received numerous awards, prizes, and recognitions, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. A native of Wales, she grew up there and in England, and she now lives in Edinburgh.

And with “Clear,” she’s written a terrific story.

As a person who has worked for a Scottish company for almost 2 decades, I often find myself wandering a bookstore in Scotland and I’m surprised by how many books get published there and never really make it across the pond. This one caught my eye as being something that I would enjoy. It focuses on the single inhabitant of a remote island and the pastor from the mainland who is sent to get him to vacate the island. Neither speak the other’s language and they both obviously want different outcomes. But when the pasture is injured, he is generously cared for by the stranger. Through their time together, they come to understand and empathize with one another.

This is very much a quiet contemplative novel. The atmosphere is overwhelming, and the characters are deep and nuanced. And while it is short, you will find yourself thinking about and debating both sides.

Read this one if you liked Metronome or Where the World Ends.

Thank you @BookClubFavorites #BookClubFavorites for the free book.

This little novel, all 185 pages, was thoroughly enjoyable! Clear, by Carys Davies, is filled with magical prose that relates the story of two men divided by class, culture and language who manage to build a trusting and mutually respectful relationship. The social constructs of the times threaten to demolish their bond, or will it? During the mid-eighteenth–nineteenth century Scottish Clearance, a time when landowners decided it would be more profitable to have livestock grazing on their land than the generations of families who tended it. John Ferguson’s job is to evict Ivar, a lifelong inhabitant of the island. The task is complicated when he is seriously injured and must rely on Ivar to nurse him back to health. The men develop a beautiful relationship that takes an interesting twist. Clear is a beautifully written book that dives into the intricacies of connection under a fascinating historical backdrop. I won’t say any more… I suggest you buy the book! Happy Reading!!

3.5* It’s 1843, Scotland. Recently married and impoverished Reverend John Ferguson has been offered the job of traveling to an island somewhere between the Shetlands and the coast of Norway to clear the land from its only inhabitant— a giant of a man who hasn’t paid rent in years— to make way for a thousand sheep to graze, unattended, year-round on the island. As a recent arrival, Ferguson accidentally falls from the cliffs overlooking the beach and is tended back to health by Ivar, the man he has come to evict. But as Ferguson recovers he forges a bond with Ivar that will jeopardize the job he has come to complete.

The year that this novel takes place in is only alluded indirectly by mentioning the separation of the Free Church of Scotland from the established Church of Scotland, which occurred through the Disruption of 1843. The Clearances—the act by which Scottish landowners evicted their poor tenants to clear the land for raising cattle— another historical event having happened during a period of approximately fifty years, is a focus of the story as well.

Through an easy to read, third person narration, Clear focuses on the characters John Ferguson and Ivar, occasionally allowing minor characters to enrich and inform the story as well. The atmosphere is inescapable as this book takes place in a bucolic, remote island where nature and the fight for survival are everyday challenges. It’s through ordinary, daily interactions that an indissoluble bond is formed between these men from entirely different backgrounds. Clear is then a story of deception, greed, faith, loneliness, loss, survival, friendship against all odds, and the much human hunger for companionship.

Steeped in history and chock-full with humanity and pathos, Clear is one of those subtle narratives that invite further reflection and discussion.

“She knew what he was going to say before he said it: that this had nothing to do with the patronage question; that surveying a small island and seeing to the transfer of its last remaining inhabitant to a new and more suitable location was a purely economic errand; that it had nothing to do with rich men doling out clerical livings and generally meddling with the spiritual independence of the Church; that the land was Lowrie’s and he had every right to organize it as he saw fit.” (p46)

The setup is perfect.

Start with historical context -- an important and tragic nineteenth century social issue worthy of serious attention. Introduce the protagonist -- a person of character whose real, quite reasonable family needs conflict somewhat with his core principles. Stir in circumstances that lead him to compromise those principles in a seemingly modest way. Make it all a bit ambiguous, so the protagonist, while guileless, is willfully blind to the weakness of the arguments supporting his potential compromise. Reveal the reactions of people in his inner circle – some view all this as appalling, others as little more than eyebrow-raising, and still others as much ado about nothing. Don’t forget to highlight the self-interest of those who encourage the compromise.

Finally (and this is no spoiler), in a moment of peril, throw in an encounter with an enigmatic “stranger” or “other,” and have the protagonist experience nothing but profound, overwhelming kindness. Now you’ve got yourself a quiet but real moral crisis, and at least the possibility of an epiphany. Or a reckoning. Or both.

But the follow-through left me frustrated. The author does very little with the premise. In a climax that feels rushed, she takes the story in an odd direction. And she never really looks closely at the essential moral problem in which the protagonist becomes entangled. I’m tempted to call it a bait-and-switch, but it feels more like the author lost interest in what she’d started.