Carys Davies, CLEAR
[0:02]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens and I am the host of this podcast, Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
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[0:31]Keris Davies is the author of Clear, a novel. Keris's debut novel, West, was shortlisted
[0:37]for the Rathbone's Folio Prize, runner-up for the Society of Authors, McKitrick Prize,
[0:42]and winner of the Wales Book of the Year for Fiction. She is also the author of The Mission House,
[0:47]which was the Sunday Times London 2020 novel of the year and two collections of short stories,
[0:52]some new ambush and the redemption of Galen Pike, which won the Franco-Conner International
[0:57]Short Story Award and the Gerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Her other awards include the Royal
[1:03]Society of Literature's V.S. Pritchett Prize, the Society of Authors All of Cook Short Story Award,
[1:09]and a Coleman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Born in Wales, she lived and worked
[1:13]for 12 years in New York and Chicago, and now lives in Edinburgh. Clear is her most recent novel.
[1:18]Welcome, Keris. Thank you so much for coming on Momstone Have Time to Read Books to discuss
[1:22]your novel, Clear. Congratulations. Thank you for having me.
[1:26]This is a beautiful work of literature. I mean, it really feels like that. Like, it's
[1:30]it's almost a surprise it's coming out today. I mean, it feels like it could have come out
[1:35]a hundred years ago. I don't know what. I mean, it's like timeless. There's a timeless,
[1:39]beautiful quality to it, and it's very impressive. So anyway, just thought I'd start with that.
[1:44]Thank you. Can you tell listeners what your book is about?
[1:49]Sure. So Scotland, 1843, and Scottish landowner Henry Lowry is evicting small tenants from his
[2:00]estate to make the land clear for sheep grazing. And when an impoverished newly married
[2:08]Presbyterian church minister John Ferguson comes into his orbit looking for some paid work,
[2:14]Lowry reckons that Ferguson could be just the man to clear the last remaining inhabitant
[2:21]of a very remote small island of the far north coast of Scotland, which belongs to the estate.
[2:28]And although John's wife Mary has misgivings about the whole task, she really isn't a
[2:38]that John should be going off to do it. They say they goodbye at the gloomy granite harbor in
[2:44]Aberdeen and John sets off armed with a month's worth of provisions, the official summons of
[2:52]removing in his pocket, and a pistol he's been given, but he hardly knows how to use. And
[2:59]Lee just to say things don't go smoothly. I love this idea of the picture of his wife when
[3:10]he falls and then how I'm not explaining this right, hold on. Let me get their names right,
[3:15]but basically, and it's not a digarotype. It's another kind of photo that I wasn't even
[3:18]as familiar with that you described. What was it? It's called a Calatite. It's a Calatite,
[3:24]essentially, a very early kind of photograph that had just been developed. And actually,
[3:30]when I first so yes, what happens is that well, I think there's too much of a spoiler to say
[3:37]there's an accident. And this Calatite that John is carrying of Mary gets lost and is found by either.
[3:45]And when I was first sort of feeling my way into the story, I wrote this scene and it was
[3:51]a miniature of Mary that I imagined I've found finding. And this is the really extraordinary thing
[3:59]I always find that happens with historical fiction once you've landed in a moment in time.
[4:05]And suddenly, everything seems to converge on the size of this year, 1843. And suddenly,
[4:13]everything seems to be happening in that time. And so I looked at the development of early
[4:17]photography in Scotland in Edinburgh. And there were two pioneers, David Hill and his young
[4:24]partner. And they were developing this this method called the Calatite. And the idea that either
[4:33]would be looking at either the inhabitant of the island would be looking at a photograph.
[4:41]Somebody who's lived like him in this immense solitude, I just thought that would be so powerful
[4:47]to see this thing which looks sort of like a physical two dimensional person was very powerful.
[4:55]Totally. I know. It's in the scene. It's like, he's like, this is more real than his,
[5:00]you know, white or his mother. I don't know. It's like the, I mean, the idea that you that you
[5:05]could have gone your life without having seen a photograph. And then see why that's wild. It's
[5:10]a wild thing. But yeah, it's the same. I mean, because he's been alone now for a city in his 40s,
[5:16]he's been alone since he was in his early 20s. His mother and his grandmother and his
[5:22]sister-in-law were the last people to leave the island. So you know, this photograph is so much
[5:28]more real than his memories now of the people that he loved. Well, just the way you write. I mean,
[5:35]not I think the accent was so early on. It's, I mean, but the way even you write about pain and
[5:41]broke, you know, a broken ankle or just all these little details that you give for each of your
[5:47]scenes makes them jump off the page and tell me a little bit about your training and writing. And
[5:55]then how you arrive at a story like this about a moment in time, like why this moment in time,
[6:02]why these people like, how did your imagination go there? Why this book? I don't know. It's a
[6:07]a marvel, but tell me more. Well, so I'll take the first part of the question. When I began to write
[6:15]fiction, I began to write short stories. I was actually living in the United States back in the
[6:22]back in the early 90s. And I began reading all the great American short story writers,
[6:28]Fanoreo Conner, John Chiva, Udora Welty, Grace Paoli. And I was completely blown away. I hadn't read
[6:36]them before. And just thought, this is what I want to do. And I was, I was really drawn to that
[6:44]that that that decision, you know, there's so much power in in brevity and, you know, what's between
[6:51]what's between the lines and also that, you know, especially somebody like Fanoreo Conner, you know,
[6:56]that mix of tragedy and comedy and pain and joy. I just, I thought this is where I want to be.
[7:06]For the first couple of decades of my career, I, I only wrote short stories. And when I wrote my first
[7:13]novel West, I thought it was a short story. And it was the longest short story I'd ever written.
[7:19]It was about 10,000 words. And then I, I sort of put it away in a drawer and thought, yes,
[7:23]that's finished. And then I got a few months later. And I thought, how could I
[7:28]thought that that works as a short story? It just doesn't. It's sort of, it feels both overburdened
[7:35]and abbreviated. It's just, I have to, I love the story, but I knew I needed to tell it in a,
[7:41]in a different way. So I started writing a novel. I didn't know how to write a novel. But I sort of
[7:49]taught myself and it was, it was a really thrilling experience. It wasn't, and I don't approach my
[7:55]novels differently from the way I, I approach short stories. It's just that every story is as long
[8:01]or as short as it needs to be. And you just have to have a feel your way into that. So I think
[8:07]writing short stories for so long, I think, you know, my, my craft developed in such a way that
[8:15]it's, it makes me a certain kind of writer. And I still love the power of brevity and
[8:20]decision and sudden changes and juxtapositions and all those things. And this, to answer the second
[8:29]part of your question, this story came in in quite an unusual way. I mean, I do, I do believe
[8:36]that you can't really go looking for stories. You know, they, they find you, you don't find them.
[8:41]But with this story, it happened about 10 years ago. I was working in the lovely old reading
[8:48]in the library in Edinburgh. And I got out to take a break. And I was browsing the shelves. And I
[8:54]found this old dictionary. And it was a dictionary of an extinct language I'd never heard of before
[9:00]called Norm, which used to be spoken on the islands called Me and Chet. And in the far north of
[9:06]Scotland, that off the northeast coast. And the islands used to belong to Denmark. And then in the
[9:13]middle of the 15th century, the Danish king pawn, the islands to Scotland. And slowly over the
[9:19]century, this old language was pushed out by Scots, which is a kind of dialect of English Scots. It's
[9:28]a different, different language. And so over 10 year period, I just went back to this dictionary
[9:35]over and over again because I just loved the words they were so rich and so specific. You know,
[9:42]so many of them described the sea and the clouds and the fog and the weather. But also a kind of
[9:49]almost feudal way of life. And I knew there was a story there, but I just didn't know what it was. But
[9:55]eventually I realized that I could sort of see either. You can see this map.
[10:00]And on an island, I knew he was alone
[10:03]and I knew he was probably the very last speaker
[10:05]of this extinct language.
[10:07]And I thought that conceivably this could put him
[10:11]somewhere in the middle of the 19th century,
[10:13]which then led me into the whole history
[10:17]of what was happening in Scotland at that time
[10:21]where the land was being cleared by the big land owners
[10:24]to make way sheep and people like either
[10:27]were being evicted from their homes.
[10:30]So that's why I think, but it was always, it's a novel.
[10:36]I really wrote the story.
[10:38]A lot of the research I sort of did afterwards.
[10:42]I, you know, I think with historical fiction
[10:45]you've always got to be careful not to just get
[10:49]too swamped in research.
[10:51]So I prefer to try and grasp what's,
[10:56]you know, what sort of fleeting and intimate
[10:58]and human and emotional first in a grasp that.
[11:03]And so I wrote this book really out of the words
[11:07]in the dictionary that that was what I used
[11:10]to try and get myself into Iber's head
[11:13]and create his island and his life
[11:17]and the way he is his fierce attachment in place.
[11:22]Amazing.
[11:23]When you're writing, how much do you go back
[11:26]and revise later versus making sure every sentence is right?
[11:29]Because every sentence feels quite deliberate.
[11:31]Yeah, I mean, a lot.
[11:33]It's a very, I never used to know what writers meant
[11:36]when they sort of talked about when I did this draft
[11:39]and then I did this draft and this draft and this,
[11:41]it never really feels like that to me.
[11:43]It feels like total chaos until it doesn't.
[11:49]And then, and that usually comes when I know
[11:52]how to begin and that with this book starts
[11:56]with where John is in a storm
[11:59]and he's approaching the island.
[12:01]And once I'd written that scene and he was there,
[12:06]then I wrote the rest of the book in a very,
[12:10]sort of intense period of a few months.
[12:13]But I've been thinking about it for,
[12:15]as I said before, for about 10, about 10 years.
[12:18]So, and then, yes, and then I just,
[12:21]I go over and over and back and back
[12:24]and then finally when I'm still sort of fiddling
[12:28]with commas and then I think, okay,
[12:31]I think it's done.
[12:34]Are you at work on anything else now?
[12:36]I'm always, I'm always working.
[12:39]I'm always thinking about stories.
[12:42]I always have a few things sort of bubbling away at once
[12:47]and just I'm at that.
[12:48]And before one sort of, you know, comes to the surface
[12:52]and, you know, announces itself as the ones.
[12:56]So I think I know which one that is,
[12:59]but I'm still at this like, sort of bubbling away today.
[13:04]Sounds good.
[13:06]Do you have advice for aspiring authors?
[13:08]Just, I mean, it's so hard to say, you know,
[13:13]be patient, but really, you know,
[13:16]it's a marathon, not a sprint.
[13:19]You know, I know some writers do,
[13:21]they write a book, it's their first book
[13:25]and it's fantastic, but that was not, you know,
[13:29]not my experience.
[13:30]It's been a very kind of long road,
[13:33]but, you know, just try and just read and read and read
[13:38]and learn and just know that, you know,
[13:42]those periods of despair where you feel you're not
[13:46]walking anywhere, that's, you know,
[13:49]that's all that really is, nothing is wasted.
[13:51]You know, you are making progress,
[13:54]even when you've absolutely feel like you're not.
[13:57]So you just have to keep doing it, there's no other way
[14:01]and, you know, you have to be patient on the page
[14:04]and you also have to be patient in terms of where you feel
[14:08]you're going professionally, you know,
[14:10]and try not to think about that too much.
[14:15]Is this where you thought you would be at this point
[14:17]in your life?
[14:18]I don't know what, what did I, what did I think?
[14:21]I don't know, I don't think I ever really dared hope.
[14:24]I just sort of, I really did just go from story to story
[14:28]and, you know, each little success was such a,
[14:32]I remember, you know, when I was writing short stories,
[14:34]if I got one short story published in a year,
[14:37]that would, that was absolutely enough to, you know,
[14:40]to keep me going.
[14:42]So yeah, I don't think I ever had a vision of what shape
[14:46]life would take, you know, you just take each story
[14:49]and try and make it the best it can be
[14:51]and, and I hope that somebody might be interested
[14:54]in reading it.
[14:55]And I think, I read that you were a judge of the
[15:00]New York Public Library's prize, the Young Line prize.
[15:02]I had that, how was that?
[15:04]I was a young lion for many years for myself.
[15:06]No, I'm an old lion, but I was at one point, a young lion.
[15:09]Right.
[15:11]Well, it was, no, judging is, judging is always,
[15:16]I really like judging and I take it very seriously
[15:20]because, you know, winning a prize or even being shortlisted
[15:23]or any of those things, it's such a huge,
[15:26]that means so much to a writer at any stage in their career.
[15:31]So I do, I do take it, I take it very seriously.
[15:35]And next always a real privilege.
[15:39]I judged one thing once and I was like, oh my gosh,
[15:42]I didn't realize this is so much work, it's so much work.
[15:45]No, it's, it's, it's an awful lot of work.
[15:48]And then, you know, so, you know,
[15:49]you're always comparing apples and oranges too.
[15:51]I mean, so I'm judging a prize at the moment, you know,
[15:54]and it's, you know, a lot of 800 word,
[15:58]800 page novels and then very slender ones.
[16:02]And it's, I think in the end, I sort of,
[16:06]I think a book has to sort of, you know,
[16:08]give me a shock to the head and the heart, you know,
[16:11]that's all I can say.
[16:12]It's the one that sort of probably does the best job of that.
[16:16]But yeah, and, you know, then you, you know,
[16:18]you discuss it with the other judges
[16:20]and sometimes you realize that you haven't given something
[16:26]quite, you know, the shock that you should have.
[16:28]And then you go back and, you know, change your mind
[16:32]and, yeah, I love what you just said
[16:35]that a book has to give you a shock to the head
[16:38]and the heart.
[16:39]I mean, that is all we're looking for.
[16:40]That is the summary of what a good book does.
[16:43]So good to have as an opposite.
[16:46]And that is enough, is it a clear, is there, you know, target?
[16:50]Are you reading anything now that you really love?
[16:53]I just, I'm in a book club with some friends in New York
[16:58]and LA, actually, which we sort of have kept going all the way
[17:03]through the pandemic system, it's always on zoom.
[17:05]And, but we only read dead writers.
[17:08]So, this last, in fact, yes, just yesterday,
[17:12]we did the prime of Miss Jean Brody,
[17:15]which all of us had read as teenagers.
[17:19]And, you know, now we'd come back to it.
[17:21]And it was so extraordinary because we'd all remembered it
[17:25]as a completely different book.
[17:27]We'd all remembered Jean Brody as this rather eccentric,
[17:31]rather wonderful teacher that, you know,
[17:34]had all her girls in her thrall.
[17:37]And now we went back to it and we realized
[17:39]that she's this sort of manipulative fascist.
[17:44]And I suppose, you know, we thought
[17:48]that's probably Muriel Sparks' great skill is that she,
[17:51]you know, when we read it as teenagers,
[17:53]we saw her in the way that, you know,
[17:56]young students do see those sort of maverick teachers.
[18:00]So, anyway, it made me admire it even even more.
[18:03]And it was also interesting because it's set in Scotland
[18:06]and she has some, she captures that sort of atmosphere
[18:11]of Edinburgh and, you know, the sort of Calvinist Presbyterian
[18:16]past.
[18:17]And I love what she says about Calvinism
[18:20]as being a terrible joke that we all used to believe in.
[18:24]So, anyway, so now I'm reading,
[18:27]and now I'm reading another book by her,
[18:29]the Mandelbaum Gate, which is fascinating for other reasons
[18:33]because it's set in Jerusalem in just before the 1967 war.
[18:38]So, that's a very interesting book to be reading
[18:43]in our present moment.
[18:45]Absolutely.
[18:46]Great.
[18:47]Well, Cara, thank you so much.
[18:48]It was a joy to discuss, clear with you.
[18:51]Congratulations.
[18:52]And yeah, thank you for coming on.
[18:54]Thank you.
[18:55]Thank you so much for having me.
[18:56]Okay, my pleasure.
[18:57]Best of luck.
[18:58]Bye-bye.
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