Splendid isolation

Clear by Carys Davies

Novel ideas from Catherine

By Catherine Williams, Vice Chairperson, St Duthac Book and Arts Festival

"He wished he could swim – the swimming belt felt like a flimsy thing and it had been no comfort to be told not to worry, the men couldn’t swim either.


Each time the boat rose he glimpsed the rocky shore, the cliffs, the absence of any kind of landing; each time descended, the rocks vanished and were replaced by a liquid wall of grey.”


The opening paragraphs of Clear by Carys Davies, leads the reader right to the heart of the remoteness and isolation that makes this short novel so compelling.


Set in 1843, John Ferguson is a young church Minister, broken away from the Church of Scotland to be part of the new Free Church; he is married, impoverished, and without a parish or flock. In desperation he turns to the only paid work he can find - evicting the last person remaining on a remote island off the North coast of mainland Scotland. Dirty work that is part of the so-called “improvement” of the land management of huge swathes of the north, later known as “The Clearances.”


Leaving his wife behind, John is taken by boat and landed into another world, one of huge skies, towering cliffs, and the screams of thousands of seabirds circling overhead. Before going to meet the man he has been sent to evict, John has an accident, tumbling almost to his death, and is found by Ivar. As the one nurses the other, each man wary, bonds begin to form despite there being no common language.


This tightly told story of developing friendship has at its heart deceit, for John does not reveal what his real purpose is, that when the boat comes back to collect him, Ivan will be forced off the island to make way for sheep. Tense and tender in equal measure, with beautiful prose throughout, I am sure this novel will come to be viewed as a modern classic.


Clear was Waterstones Book of the Month earlier this year, and Pulitzer Prize winning author Hernan Diaz praised the work highly saying “Not since Silas Marner have I encountered such a poignant, profound depiction of both solitude and connection.”


Edinburgh-based author, Carys Davies’ novel, Clear, priced at £12.99, is published by Granta Books ISBN 978 1 80351 040 8 hardback and ISBN 978 1 80351 041 5 ebook and is available from all good bookshops and of course free from your local library.

Some of you may know me already as I worked for the mobile library service for 28 years, driving and staffing the mobile library that covered Evanton right up to Rosehall and all points in between. Since taking early retirement I have been involved with the St Duthac Book & Arts Festival Group, planning and producing an annual Festival in and around Tain. I am never far from books, and in the coming months myself and colleague Peter Newman will take turns reviewing a book and hopefully introducing you to authors you have not yet tried.