Carys Davies

Carys Davies on Clear

Carys Davies returns with a Shetland-set historical fiction title, Clear. Atmospheric and beautifully written, this short novel exposes the tragedy of the Highland Clearances, with a setting that is sure to resonate with fans of Audrey Magee's The Colony or C.J. Cooke's The Lighthouse Witches.

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 is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.

Carys Davies is the author of two novels, The Mission House (Granta, 2020) and West (Granta, 2018), which won the Wales Book of the Year Fiction award, was Runner-Up for the Society of Author's McKitterick Prize and was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. Her short stories have been widely published in magazines and anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and have won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Award, the Royal Society of Literature's V S Pritchett Prize, and a Northern Writers' Award. Davies' second collection, The Redemption of Galen Pike, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award 2015.