Clear: A Novel

Summary

“Tender, riveting, and inventive is Clear, the newest offering and masterpiece from the brilliant Carys Davies. It will take your breath away…What a thrill.” —Sarah Jessica Parker

A New York Times Book Review Top 10 Historical Fiction Book of 2024

A Vogue, The Washington Post, NPR, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, and The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Best Book of the Year

Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the 2024 Bookmark Festival Book of the Year
Finalist for the Libby Book of the Year in Historical Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2024 Books Are My Bag Award, Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown Award, Saltire Society Literary Award, Wales Book of the Year, and Europese Literatuurprijs
Longlisted for the Blackwell’s Book of the Year, Highland Book Prize, and Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

A “daring and necessary…sophisticated and playful” (The New York Times) novel from an award-winning writer, Clear is the story of a minister dispatched to a remote island to “clear” its last remaining inhabitant—an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.

John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland—Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted.

Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. “Clear chronicles the surprising bond that develops between these two men…pack[ing] a great deal of power into a compact tale” (The Wall Street Journal) about connection, home, and hope—in which John begins to learn Ivar’s language, and Ivar sees himself reflected through the eyes of another person for the first time in decades.

Unfolding during the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances—a period of the 19th century which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions—this singular novel explores what binds us together in the face of insurmountable difference, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can endure despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, “a love letter to the scorching power of language” (The Guardian), Clear is “a jewel of a novel” (The Washington Post)—a profound and unforgettable read.