About the book: 1843. On a remote Scottish island, Ivar, the sole occupant, leads a life of quiet isolation until the day he finds a man unconscious on the beach below the cliffs. The newcomer is John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister sent to evict Ivar and turn the island into grazing land for sheep.
Unaware of the stranger’s intentions, Ivar takes him into his home, and in spite of the two men having no common language, a fragile bond begins to form between them. Meanwhile on the mainland, John’s wife Mary anxiously awaits news of his mission.
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies’s intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us.
Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear (2024) is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.
Clear is a Sunday Times Best Book of 2024, a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick, a Vogue Best Book of 2024 So Far, a Waterstones Book You Need to Read in 2024 and an American Booksellers’ Indie Next Pick.
About the author: Carys Davies’s debut novel, West, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, longlisted for the European Literature Prize, Runner Up for the Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction. Her second novel, The Mission House, was The Sunday Times 2020 Novel Of The Year.
She is also the author of two collections of short stories, Some New Ambush and The Redemption of Galen Pike, which won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She is the recipient of the Royal Society of Literature's V S Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Short Story Award, a Northern Writers’ Award, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy.
Her short stories have been nominated for many other awards, including the Sunday Times/EFG Short Story Award and the William Trevor/Elizabeth Bowen International Short Story Prize. They have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and widely published in magazines and anthologies, including Granta, The Dublin Review, and The Stinging Fly.
She has been a judge for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and has twice judged The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. Her book reviews, essays, and other non-fiction have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The London Evening Standard, Marie Claire, the Sunday Telegraph and The Times.
Born in Wales, she grew up there and in the Midlands, lived and worked for twelve years in New York and Chicago, and now lives in Edinburgh.
Rating: 5/5
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