Clear | Carys Davies

What a great book. The writing of this story is exquisite. You can feel the seaspray, taste the smoke of the peat fires and get a chill from the wind off the North Sea. The story is just 185 pages and every word matters.

Set in Scotland in the mid 19th century, Clear is about John Ferguson, a Presbyterian minister who's part of a breakaway group of clergyman setting up a new branch of the church. He's broke after resigning from his parish, so he leaves his relatively new wife behind and takes a job from a wealthy landowner (who represents everything about the old church he's leaving behind) to remove the sole resident of a small island in the north of Scotland so they can turn over the full purpose of the land to sheep. This is a true event, called the Scottish Clearances, that provides further evidence of the temperament of Scots through history. Ferguson falls, the sole resident, Ivar, finds him and nurses him back to health. Ivar had lost his. family through death or because they just left. Throughout the story, the two men strive to communicate, with John Ferguson creating a dictionary of sorts for the very particular dialect that Ivar speaks. We also meet Mary, John's wife, who eventually comes to rescue John and who has a story of her own.

The story's themes include belonging, and love, and language. It's also one of those stories where what isn't said is as powerful as what's on the page. It's a page turner, amazing for a book where very little action happens. Some reviewers and blurb writers, including my favorite Anthony Doerr, call it taut and I agree. The tension of the story, of the struggles, never lets up.

I was a wee bit disappointed on how it ends. It's just a little too tidy after all the three characters have been through. I wish there was a bit more that nodded to what was to come for the characters. But that doesn't take away from the fact that the story is so beautifully written.

"Which isn't to say he didn't long for them, or think about them, or try to see them in his mind's eye or wish they hadn't left. It isn't to say he didn't sometimes stand inside the thick stone walls of the house and try to summon the sensation of being surrounded by people he loved. It isn't to say he didn't feel a little low when summer began to give way to the slow beginning of winter; when it was the end of the short nights and the beginnings of the long ones, when most of the birds were gone and the geese had not yet arrived, and he said to Pegi, "Well, Pegi, it's just you and me again" -- Pegi who'd been given to him when he was a boy and whose name he'd been allowed to choose; Pegi who was his helper and his constant companion and was even older, now, than the black cow."