Davies, Carys. Clear. New York: Scribner 2024. Print.
He wished he could swim -- the swimming belt felt like a flimsy thin and it had been no comfort to be told not to worry, the men couldn't swim either. Each time they rose he glimpsed the rocky shore, the cliffs, the absence of any kind of landing; each time they descended, the rocks vanished and were replaced by a liquid wall of gray. He closed his eyes.
Description:
Of course, John is told the man will be set up in a better location, so should readily agree to leave his barren, wind-swept isolation for a better life. What could go wrong?
On the first day on the island, John falls from a cliff, knocking himself out, and waking up in the hovel of Ivar, the very man he is supposed to evict. John does not speak the island's ancient language used by Ivar, but in the ensuing days, slowly builds a dictionary of the forgotten words of Ivar.
Ivar lives by scraping out a small garden and raising a few wild sheep, trading wool for his rent although due to the isolation of the island, the owner has not bothered to collect payment for decades. Tragedies in his family have left him to survive on the island alone.
Before the arrival of John Ferguson [Ivarthought] he'd never really thought of the things he saw or heard or touched or felt as words....It was strange to think of a fine sea mist, say, or the cold north-easterly wind that came in spring and damaged the corn ... It was as if he'd never fully understood his solitude until now -- as if, with the arrival of John Ferguson, he had been turned into something he'd never been or hadn't been for a long time...
This quiet novel slowly unfolds the awkward relationship of the men as John recovers from his injury, living in close quarters in Ivar's sparse hut. And meanwhile, John's wife worries about her husband whom she hasn't been able to contact and was against the work he was to undertake. Since the next boat to pick up John and Ivar is one month away, she is naturally restless.
I loved this book. It is calming, exciting, intelligent, human, and challenging in its very quiet way. There is even an appendix with entries from an actual 1908 dictionary of the Norn language used in the Shetlands of Ivar. Davies notes that the last native-speaker of Norn had died in 1850, just after the time period of this novel.
Author Davies in new to me, so I'm immediately ordering some of his other works. Fingers crossed they are anywhere near as good as Clear.
Happy reading.
Fred
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Davies, Carys. West.
A widowed mule-breeder hears of the discovery of huge bones in Tennessee and, leaving behind his sister and daughter on his run-down farm, sets off into unknown lands to see whether these ancient giants still exist.
