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I really appreciate Cary‘s Davies‘ writing. This novel set at the end of the Scottish Clearances on a remote and forbidding island is a marvel of history, language, and love. Full review at http://booknaround.blogspot.com/2024/07/review-clear-by-carys-davies.html

Clear. By Carys Davies. Set in 1843, Minister John Ferguson travels from Scotland towards Norway to a tiny island, where one man lives alone. A beautiful wild setting , a story about loneliness and human connection. I loved it.

😳Sorry, another unpopular opinion. Beautiful written but there is something missing for me in the story and in the ending🤷🏽‍♀️I wanted to love it after all those extraordinary reviews/ratings in GR and Litsy. Maybe I could give it another try in the future. 3⭐️

June 2024 Book #14

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It‘s the 1840s and Scotland is going through huge changes. For landowners it‘s more economic to have sheep on their land that tenants. The priest John Ferguson takes the job to travel to an island with only one inhabitant to tell him that he need to relocate. A book about these two men who don‘t speak each other‘s language and how John is learning Ivar‘s language so they can start communicating. There‘s something tender about this short novel

Under 200 short pages, the story of a poor minister who is hired to relocate a man living alone on a Scottish island, grabs you and doesn‘t let go. It‘s the mid 1800s and the landowner only wants sheep on this island, not people. And these two men have to somehow connect while speaking different languages. Definitely a book worth reading.

Wow, this packs SO much in its 185 pages. Clear was practically a one-sitting read for me, only taking a break for lunch. Davies' writing just throws you into this stark landscape and you feel like you are right there, rooting for these two odd characters.

So, he thought, I am like a puffin.
Like a puffin I wasn‘t frightened of him. Like a puffin I have spent my days swimming beside him.
Like a puffin I have walked about, close to the snare.

(I‘ve never seen a puffin, but has always loved them, mostly for their colorful beak)

^^ 167, the word for the moment before

61 “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.” 😂

Language, culture clash, colonization. Companionship. 1840s Scotland. Minister reluctantly takes on evicting the last inhabitant of a Shetland Island. Taut, haunting, quiet. Rushed but satisfying end. 2024

42 “Into her mind a picture came of this vast emptying-out—a long, gray, and never-ending procession of tiny figures snaking their way like a river through the country.”

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

19-20 Jul 24
Such a wonderful story of language, dying worlds, loneliness and love. The setting of the Orkney Islands seems so desolate and Ivar‘s way of life is so grim and bare and yet I can also see the beauty. The way Davies shows the desperation of each of John and Mary is so evocative and for me the ending was perfect.
I loved this and do hope it makes the Booker longlist.