Join us for a brilliant event with prize-winning author, Carys Davies, discussing her latest novel Clear. A wondrous tale of bonds forged when two men are pitted against each other on a remote island during the Highland Clearances, from the author of West.
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' 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.
About the Author
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 C ook 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'C onnor International Short Story Award 2015.
Reviews
“The Welsh novelist writes epics in miniature... It is a tender, humane book” - Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday Times
“A compact, taut and brilliant novel with an ingenious premise. The book is about belonging, a dying language, secrets, and a pistol in a box. I loved every page” - Anthony Doerr
“An atmospheric marvel... It overflows with all the fundamentals of humanity: life, love, connection, empathy... The characters are so vividly alive, so full of feeling that you can almost hear their hearts pounding” - Nick Duerden, I Newspaper
