Clear
By Carys Davies
Published 2024
Read Nov 2024
Although this is the 3rd book published by this author, Clear is the first one for this reader.
Davies sets the story in 1843, the year of the Great Disruption in the Scottish Church and a year in which the Clearance of the Scottish Highlands and the Shetland Islands, both of which are important elements of the story.
Davies’ language is very economical—this reader was reminded of Claire Keegan in this regard. Her story construction slowly reveals information about the three main characters (John Ferguson, Ivar, and Mary Ferguson). Using a shifting Point of View, each character tells the reader of their past, their hopes and fears, and their challenges.
We first meet John Ferguson when he is swimming from a boat to a shore. Eventually we learn that he is a minister in the Scottish State Church who has joined about 450 of his fellow ministers in the Great Disruption of of Scottish Church to break away from the state church to form the Free Church of Scotland. A significant consequence of this decision is loss of his salary as well as his home and church building for his congregation. To make ends meet temporarily, he has taken a job to journey to a distant island somewhere between the Shetland Islands and Norway to survey the property of a landowner and move the sole resident off the property (part of the Clearance when landowners displaced tenants on their property to replace them with a sheep farm). The day after he survives the swim from the boat to the shore, he slips and falls on rocks while still naked after taking a bath in the sea and is struck injured and unconscious.
We meet Ivar, the sole resident on the property. His father and brothers were lost many years ago in an accident at sea. His mother and brother’s wife left some years ago to find a better life. He remained and has eked out an existence with a now blind cow, some chickens, and a garden. He has paid rent to the landowner from bird feathers he collects, from knitted goods he makes, and from crops he works at growing. He hasn’t seen the landowner or rent collector for 3 years, which is good as he’s been ill and his ability to produce anything of worth has greatly diminished.
Ivar finds John Ferguson unconscious and takes him to his small abode where he tends to his wounds and hopes he’ll recover. John Ferguson does regain consciousness and finds himself in a bit of a pickle. This kind man is nursing him to health (he has much recovering left to do) and is providing him food and shelter despite clearly having little for himself—how can he tell him what he’s come to do. An additional and huge complication is that Ivar speaks only Norn, a language that has since essentially died out.
As part of the fall John Ferguson lost his “papers” including his translation of the gospels into Scottish—a mission he’s been working on for many years. The paper remains, but the words have disappeared after their bath in the sea. He uses this paper to write down words of Norn that Ivar is teaching him. After a few weeks, this dictionary has reached 55 words (actual Norn translations although with Ferguson’s spelling) and the two men have formed a significant bond despite their lack of language.
Meanwhile, Mary Furguson decides she needs to fetch her husband as she becomes increasingly convinced that he’s not fully up to this rude task. While she’s travelling, we learn about her life, her courtship with John Furguson, and her life with him.
This reader won’t provide more details about John Ferguson’s stay on the island with Ivar or Mary’s arrival on the island. In a spare 185 pages Davies packs quite a number of significant events and the various characters’ take on them. In addition, her descriptions of the island enabled this reader to feel the mist, see the fog, see the fields, feel the cold water through which John Ferguson and later Mary Ferguson travel from the ship to the island. The environment of the island, both the natural surroundings and Ivar’s home, are vividly presented.
Themes of loneliness, love, perseverance, faith, pursuit of a calling are all part of this slender volume. The ending has an unexpected twist which this reader won’t reveal. This reader found it to provide a hopeful ending considering the task John Ferguson has been employed to accomplish.
Davies provided this reader incentive to learn more about the Great Disruption and the Clearance as well as a desire to read her other books and to look forward to future ones.
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