Carys Davies - Clear

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.

Ivar takes the stranger into his home, and despite having no common language, a fragile bond begins to form between them.

Back on the mainland, John's wife, Mary, anxiously awaits news of his mission, which is to evict Ivar from the island.Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling and an exquisite short novel by a master of the form and was Waterstones Scottish and Welsh Book of the Month in March 2025Carys Davies is the author of two other novels, The Mission House and West.

Her short stories have been widely published and broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and have won The Royal Society of Literature's V S Pritchett Prize and a Northern Writers' Award, amongst others.