Clear

Clear (2024) is a historical fiction novel by Welsh author Carys Davies. It follows Free Church of Scotland minister John Ferguson as he travels to a remote island to evict Ivar, the last remaining resident, so that the wealthy landowner can utilize the island to house sheep. The novel explores Eviction and Moral Reckoning, Language and Empathy as Bridges Across Isolation, The Power of Place in Shaping Identity, and The Moral Cost of Religious Obedience and the Courage of Personal Change.

Clear won the 2025 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the 2025 Wales Book of the Year. It was also nominated for the Walter Scott Prize, Scotland’s National Book Award, the Prix Femina, the Prix Médicis, and the Europese Literatuurprijs. Davies is the author of the short story collections Some New Ambush (2007) and The Redemption of Galen Pike (2014) and the novels West (2018) and The Mission House (2020).

This guide is based on the 2024 Scribner Kindle Edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of death, graphic violence, sexual content, child death, animal cruelty and death, and sexual violence.

Plot Summary

Clear alternates between a present-day timeline and flashbacks to various episodes in the characters’ lives. For the sake of clarity, this summary presents events mostly in chronological order.

In the Great Disruption of 1843, the year Clear takes place, many Presbyterian ministers of the Church of Scotland rebel against the church and the system of patronage, creating the rival Free Church of Scotland. John Ferguson is one of these rebellious ministers. Without patronage from the Church of Scotland, John has no income to provide for himself and his wife, Mary.

While Mary does not care about money, as she’s used to living simply, John feels pressured to provide as a husband. He asks his brother-in-law, Andrew, to find him a job. Andrew knows Henry Lowrie, a wealthy landowner who is clearing his land of tenants to make space for sheep. Henry gives John a job helping to clear a man, Ivar, from his distant island. Though Mary questions the ethics and danger of the job, John accepts. He takes the Summons of Removing and the pistol from Strachan, the factor (i.e., agent) who previously collected rent from the island. John also carries a photograph of Mary with him.

John takes a boat to the island where Ivar lives. John is afraid of the water, as he cannot swim, so he clings to his life vest until he makes it to shore. John finds the Baillie House and unpacks his box and satchel. He takes out his photo of Mary and his gun. John sleeps in the cold, unwelcoming room. When he wakes, he decides to try to bathe in a spring. He strips out of his clothes and enters the water, but when he gets out and tries to take notes in his ledger, he slips and falls, injuring himself and sending his satchel into the water.

Ivar listens to the rain patter on the roof of his house before he begins his daily chores. Ivar goes outside with his horse, Pegi, and finds John’s satchel floating in the water while collecting grass for his cow. He takes the satchel back to his house and investigates the contents, finding pages washed clean of ink and the photo of Mary. Ivar’s solitude makes him feel a bond to the image of Mary, so he keeps the photo near him, tucked into the collar of his sweater.

Ivar finds John injured and takes him back to his house. John is unconscious, and Ivar sets his broken leg and tends to his wounds. John eventually wakes, and Ivar finds himself resenting John’s consciousness, as Ivar wants to continue to admire the picture of Mary but now must do so outside, as he understands that Mary must be John’s wife. John briefly experiences amnesia, remembering nothing after boarding the ship that brought him to the island, but his memories eventually return. He feels uncertain how to tell Ivar that he must leave the island, especially since the water washed away the Summons of Removing and the speech that a schoolteacher helped John write in a language assumed to be similar to Ivar’s. John’s translation of the Gospels into Scots—the language of most of his parishioners and a project he’s spent years on—is also gone.

As the two men get to know one another, Ivar’s affections shift from the picture of Mary to John himself. Ivar takes care of John, who struggles to communicate with him. Ivar’s family left the island over 20 years previously, after Lowrie and Strachan raised the rents to an untenable amount and the land became difficult to live on. Ivar has been alone ever since, and now he finds John’s breaking of his solitude invigorating. As John heals from his fall, Ivar gives him a crutch to allow him to walk. John follows Ivar as Ivar completes his chores. John takes notes on the topography of the island for Strachan, but also begins to take notes of Ivar’s language and terminology, which he begins to easily pick up. When John falls asleep, Ivar looks over John’s list of words. John continues travelling around the island with Ivar, and their shared dictionary grows.

Meanwhile, Mary stays at Lowrie’s estate until one of Lowrie’s daughters-in-law tells her about a deadly incident near Tummel Bridge. Mary hurries to her sister Isobel and brother-in-law Andrew’s house and confronts Andrew about failing to tell her or John about Strachan killing a man during an eviction. Mary worries John is in danger or will be forced to kill. She decides to travel to the island to stop it. She sells her wedding ring for passage on a series of ships north.

Back on the island, John and Ivar grow closer, caring for each other despite John’s worry that Ivar will discover his true purpose on the island. However, when John discovers Ivar has hidden Mary’s picture, he reacts angrily, storming out and hiding in a hermit’s cell until he comes to understand Ivar’s reaction. While John is gone, Ivar discovers the Lowrie box and pistol in the Baillie house and realizes that John was sent from Lowrie. Hurt, Ivar takes the gun and box and returns home. He is distant from John until he realizes that he doesn’t care why John came, only that he is now there. He returns to John and they dance together before being intimate. John tells Ivar the truth.

Mary arrives at the island. The boat she takes there is heading to Trondheim, but the captain agrees to wait for her to collect John. Ivar shoots at Mary with the gun, thinking she’s a Lowrie man sent to take John away. He misses, and Mary is unharmed. Mary, John, and Ivar sit together in Ivar’s house to dry off and calm down. Mary realizes that John and Ivar have feelings for each other as they communicate with each other in Ivar’s language. She still loves John and can’t imagine being without him, so she offers to have Ivar come live with them and join their relationship. John is surprised, but he accepts.

John, Mary, Ivar, and Ivar’s horse Pegi board the ship to Trondheim. John shows Mary the dictionary he and Ivar are constructing, and they all add to it together.