Libby's Reviews > Clear

4.5 rounded up

“Clear” by Carys Davies, while firmly ensconced in its historical setting, is a well-crafted and meaningful character study. In 1843, the minister John Ferguson left the Church of Scotland to join the Free Church of Scotland. The author writes that this decision made him a poor man. Churchless and lacking in funds, he travels to a remote island in the name of its landowners to evict its one resident. This function is part of the Highland Clearances occurring from 1750-1860. Landowners cast out renters who have lived on the land for generations, aiming to turn the land over to crops and sheep or whatever will earn them the greatest profit. John Ferguson’s eviction task will earn him a tidy sum with which he plans to restart a new life with his wife, Mary.

While John Ferguson is a sketchy theologian, Ivar, who has lived on the island for decades, is a more substantial figure. His tasks are the ones of survival and his days are observed in close connection with land, sea, and sky. Even his physical description details a man whose life is determined by his natural surroundings.

His hair was the color of dirty straw, his beard darker, browner, full and perhaps unclean, with a patch of gray over his jaw on the left-hand side that stood out from the rest like a child’s handprint. Having no mirror, he had no clear picture in his mind of his own appearance beyond the uncertain reflections he sometimes saw in the island’s pools and puddles,...

We will first meet Mary in the picture that John Ferguson carries ashore in his satchel, a picture that Ivar will retrieve from the sea.

...he found a dark-haired woman inside a leather frame, looking up at him from behind a piece of broken glass with a shy and secret smile. …the woman herself was as alive as anything he’d ever seen, and more alive, by far, than his memories of Jenny or his mother or his grandmother.

Carys Davies establishes a mythic-like quality in her minimalist plot. She does this through imagery and character interactions. First of all, Jack Ferguson’s landing on the island is suggestive of rebirth. It is very different from the new life he has been planning with Mary, but regardless he is born again into this new world. Everything old has passed away. He’s even lost the picture of his wife. His purpose of evicting Ivar is something he’d like to forget. For Ivar, it’s a new life as well. He has someone to talk to and thereby the loneliness of his previous life is revealed. Another feature of this “rebirth” is John Ferguson learning to communicate in Ivar’s language. This holds a prominent spot in the narrative. Ivar’s language is Norn, which the author writes in her author’s notes, has now become extinct. As Ferguson learns the language, he realizes that it is much more expressive than his own, having many ways to describe the sea instead of a few. Ivar also has a spinning wheel and knits.

It was peaceful, watching the slight movements of the big needles in the man’s hands while he knitted, and when he was spinning to follow the passage of the thread as it was twisted and guided by the fly to the spool. The spinning wheel made him think of fairy tales…

The “hero in disguise” is Ivar, who least resembles a hero, but upon whom John Ferguson will come to rely. Another mythic trope is the artifact of doom served by Pandora’s box or the Philosopher’s Stone in other stories. In this story, Mary’s picture fulfills this role. Whether a predictor of doom or more of a catalyst, I’ll leave readers to discover.

The ending is conclusive but a bit open-ended at the same time. I love this because life for these characters could go in many directions but they will never forget when they were together on the island. It’s easy to understand the experience as transformative.