Carys Davies – She Reads Novels

This month Karen of Booker Talk and Kathryn of Nut Press are hosting Reading Wales, celebrating the work of Welsh authors. I have chosen a book by Carys Davies, an author born in Llangollen, North Wales. Last year I read and enjoyed her most recent book, Clear, which is set in Scotland during the Highland Clearances. West, published in 2018, was her first novel and the setting and subject matter are very different, but the two books do share some similar themes.

West is set in America in the early 19th century, a few years after the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition, and revolves around Cy Bellman, a widowed mule breeder who lives in Pennsylvania with his ten-year-old daughter, Bess. Inspired by stories of the expedition and by an article he reads in the newspaper describing the discovery of huge animal bones found in a Kentucky swamp, Cy decides to set out on a journey west to find the giant animals he believes must still be roaming in the wild. Everyone else thinks he’s a fool, including his sister Julie, but Cy is determined to prove them all wrong.

As well as following Cy Bellman’s journey into the wilderness, Davies explores the effects his departure has on Bess, left behind on the mule farm with Aunt Julie as her father rides off into uncharted territories. He tells her he’ll back in a year, or maybe two, but that’s a very long time for a ten-year-old girl and she thinks about her father daily. Unlike the others, Bess doesn’t think he’s being foolish – she’s proud of him and thinks of him as a brave, noble figure. She has no doubt that he’ll find the animals he’s searching for and will return safe and well. Her own wellbeing, however, is a different matter, as in Bellman’s absence, their scheming neighbour Elmer Jackson has set his sights on the farm and the women who live there.

Davies writes from the perspectives of both Cy and Bess, with occasional sections from other characters’ points of view. The passages describing the landscape Cy passes through as he travels west are vivid and feel authentic, stressing the vastness of the land, the harshness of the winters and the sense of isolation as he moves further away from civilization. Along the way he acquires a guide, a Shawnee boy with the unflattering name of Old Woman from a Distance, who helps him hunt for food and navigate dangerous river crossings in return for gifts of ribbons, beads and other small items. Cy’s attitude towards his guide is as you would expect, given the time period, and now and then we also get a glimpse of the guide’s thoughts about Cy. The fact that neither speaks the other’s language adds another obstacle to their relationship and despite spending so much time in each other’s company, neither makes the attempt to learn. Instead, they communicate through looks and gestures and through showing emotion. This idea of communication without a common language is explored in more depth in Davies’ later book, Clear.

West is novella-length, which makes it a quick read, but it’s also a powerful, gripping story and I don’t think it needed to be any longer. I’m looking forward to reading Davies’ other novel, The Mission House, and her two short story collections.

Clear is a book I hadn’t really considered reading until it appeared on the Walter Scott Prize longlist in February and I was pleased that I was still able to get a copy through NetGalley. Carys Davies is also a Welsh author, which is perfect for Reading Wales Month ’25, hosted this year by Karen at BookerTalk.

Clear is a beautifully written novella set in 1843 and telling the story of a friendship that forms between two men who should be enemies. John Ferguson is one of many evangelical ministers who have broken away from their church to form the Free Church of Scotland. Having given up his job and his home to establish this new church, John is struggling financially and, out of desperation, accepts an offer of work from a landowner who wants him to travel to a remote Scottish island and evict the last remaining tenant from the land. Forced evictions like these, known as Clearances, have been happening all over the Scottish Highlands as landlords remove the people living on their estates so that they can use the land for other purposes such as sheep farming. It’s a traumatic and often cruel process and not something John is looking forward to being part of.

The man John will have to evict is Ivar, who has lived alone on his island in the far north of Scotland since the deaths of his remaining family members. It’s an isolated life, but Ivar is content and has his horse, Pegi, for company. One day, he finds a man unconscious on the beach under the cliffs and takes him to his home to nurse him back to health. This is John Ferguson, who has met with an accident soon after arriving on the island. Ivar finds a picture of John’s wife, Mary, in his belongings and becomes infatuated with her, the first woman he’s seen for a long time – but as the injured man begins to recover, Ivar switches his affections to John himself. He has no idea why John is there, however, and because the two men speak different languages, he’s unable to ask.

Language forms an important part of the novel. Ivar speaks only Norn, a now extinct language once spoken in Shetland and Orkney, and John speaks English with a small amount of Scots. Over the course of the book, we see how two men unable to communicate in words are still able to bond and connect until eventually they do begin to learn each other’s language. In her author’s note Davies explains how the novel was inspired by Jakob Jakobsen’s Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland and she scatters Norn words throughout the book with a glossary at the back. Norn appears to have been a fascinating language; John is surprised to discover how descriptive it is and how many different words there are for mist, fog, wind and other types of weather.

Some parts of the novel are written from the perspective of Mary, John’s wife, who becomes concerned about the work her husband has been sent to do – she’s heard that the evictions can be unpleasant and violent – and decides to follow him to the island. I enjoyed reading Mary’s story and thought her sections of the book perfectly complemented Ivar and John’s. Mary’s thread of the novel comes together with the others near the end, and although I’m not going to tell you how the book ends I can say that it wasn’t what I expected but I was quite happy with it!

Carys Davies’ writing is beautiful and also very readable and I found this a quick, absorbing read. For such a short book, there’s a lot packed inside it. It reminded me a lot of Claire Keegan’s novella Small Things Like These, so if you enjoyed one book I would recommend trying the other.

Thanks to Granta Publications for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.