A stunning exquisite novel from an award-winning writer about a minister dispatched to a remote island off of Scotland to clear the last remaining inhabitant who has no intention of leaving--an unforgettable tale of resilience change and hope.John an impoverished Scottish minister has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland--Ivar who has been living alone for decades with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife Mary has serious misgivings about the errand he decides to go anyway setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted. Shortly after John reaches the island he falls down a cliff and is found unconscious and badly injured by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. The two men do not speak a common language but as John builds a dictionary of Ivars world they learn to communicate and as Ivar sees himself for the first time in decades reflected through the eyes of another person they build a fragile unusual connection. Unfolding in the 1840s in the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances--which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions--this singular beautiful deeply surprising novel explores the differences and connections between us the way history shapes our deepest convictions and how the human spirit can survive despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable sensitive and spellbinding Clear is a profound and pleasurable read.
