The “hoss and horl” of the North Sea in Carys Davies’ new novel

This quiet but powerful novel opens with a small boat riding monstrous waves in a tumultuous North Sea. It plunges into the hollow troughs while Reverend John Ferguson clings to the gunwale. He’s afraid he’ll drown before the boat reaches his destination, a secluded island that’s inhabited by one person, a man called Ivar.

Scottish author Carys Davies sets Clear during a controversial time in 19^th century Scotland when landowners cleared their estates of poor, unprofitable tenants and replaced them with sheep. It’s also the time of the Great Disruption, when rebellious ministers broke away from the Church of Scotland and formed the new Free Church of Scotland. John Ferguson is one of those religious men. His choice financially ruins him and his wife Mary. It’s why he accepts a job offer from an estate owner to evict Ivar. John is morally conflicted, but he needs the money. 

In appealing bursts of two- and three-page chapters we’re drawn into the island’s bleak isolation, the vast stretches of grassland and steep cliffs. While John unpacks his satchel on the narrow iron bed inside a spartan estate cottage, Ivar, unaware, walks his beloved horse along the rocky ground collecting grass for his blind cow’s evening fodder. These and other immersive images sympathetically illustrate the separation between each man’s purpose and aloneness.

The plot dramatically turns when John slips off a cliff path. Ivar finds him unconscious on the beach. He carries John into his home and nurses him back to health with kindness and trust. Here the tragic center arrives: John and Ivar can’t communicate because Ivar speaks an ancient language. The eviction – a summons of removal — becomes an awful secret.

Much of the action takes place outside as John follows Ivar during daily chores. He points to things, so Ivar will name them in his language. “The hoss and horl of the sea,” Davies writes in singing prose, a mesmerizing chant throughout the book as John learns the words. “The yal of the gulls, the tusk of the wind, the snirk of a door.”

The viewpoint fluidly changes so we learn the background of John’s devoted union with Mary, and the reason Ivar’s family left the island, but he stayed. Back home, Mary finds out about another estate eviction that went horribly wrong with fatal consequences. Here the story takes another dramatic turn that escalates our concern. Meanwhile, Ivar discovers the purpose of John’s presence on the island.

This small book could be read in one sitting but draws us instead to read it attentively, to not miss a word, so we sense the island’s remove, the roar of the moody sea, and the wind-swept uncertainty of Ivar and John’s connection. This is a flawless work of fiction.  I closed the book with the feeling the bleak North Sea environment had been alive all around me in an atmospheric time warp. Best of all, this is a hopeful story that in the end shows what’s possible with self-truth, and the courage to accept it.

Clear, published by Scribner, is a new novel, released in April. A version of this review was recorded for broadcast on NPR member station WOSU 89.7 FM.

Afterword

I also highly recommend West, Carys Davies’ first novel about one man’s 19th century journey into the unsettled American territories. He’s in pursuit of a mammoth creature she describes as having teeth the size of pumpkins, shoulder blades a yard wide, jawbones that suggest a head as tall as a large man. It’s another slim novel. In my review, I wrote: “There’s this perfect magic to the storytelling that keeps us aloft with [Cy Bellman] in his believing in the possibility of what could be, even though we know this man is on a fool’s journey.”

I keep hearing and reading readers’ are loving Table for Two, the new book by Amor Towles, author of A Gentleman in Moscow. The enthusiasm is noteworthy because it’s a short story collection, and short stories don’t often get the lovefest of novels. I haven’t read Table for Two (tempted to make room for it) but riding this enthusiasm I want to recommend Davies’ short-story collection The Redemption of Galen Pike. It’s wonderful.